


Procedures

by stefrobrts



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Case Fic, F/M, Movie: Fight The Future, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 16:48:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 27,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6087217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stefrobrts/pseuds/stefrobrts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary - Shortly after their return from Antarctica, the X Files are on hold while Mulder and Scully are<br/>assigned to assist the Seattle FBI Office in catching a bizarre serial murderer before a young runaway becomes his next victim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this and published it to Gossamer in September 1998. That's eighteen years ago! I still can remember how exciting it was to see Fight The Future in theaters, my heroes on the big screen! And I came out of it with perhaps some unrealistic ideas of where the MSR 'ship was heading. Well, it got there eventually. This was a great time to be involved in the fanfic community. So much great writing going on. The OBSSE (Order of the Blessed St Scully the Enigmatic) was THE place to hang out, and the creativity coming from there was epic. 
> 
> I pulled this story out and re-edited it because I am a more skilled writer today than I was in my 20s, and it needed a little help - less help than I thought it would, actually. I really enjoyed re-reading it for the first time in many years. It's a long one, I hope you enjoy it.

Seattle, WA  
Pioneer Square  
June 16, 10:13PM

 

"You need a little action, honey?"

The women lined up along the curb. A number of them pushed towards his car to get his attention, letting their tube tops, mini-skirts, and fishnet stockings do most of the talking for them.

"Too old, whites only, no fatties," he callously dismissed the women until only one remained, a very small woman who stood shyly away from the car. "How about you, baby? Move up here so I can get a look at you."

She stepped up to the window and looked at him. He took in her tiny body, small breasts, and soft pale skin, and gave her a skeptical look. "What are you, 14, 15?"

"I'm 18, I'm just small for my age." She said, trying to sound seductive.

"You're jail-bait, honey. You're not a day over 16, I'll bet." He leaned down and looked out the windows all around him. "What is this, some kind of sting? I'm not getting busted for this. I'm out of here." He jammed the car into drive and left the curb so fast he nearly hit an old camaro driving slowly down the street.

The camaro stopped and the driver beckoned to the young girl. She walked over, as sexily as she could muster, tottering a bit in her spike-heeled shoes and tight skirt and leaned into the passenger window.

"What can I do for you?" She asked, trying to sound seductive, even though her voice cracked a little with nerves.

"I'm sure we can think of something," his voice was velvety smooth. "Get in." The dash lights dimly lit his face, throwing his profile into stark relief, highlighting his thick beard. His glasses reflected the green light with their flat lenses, glowing like cat's eyes. She gathered her courage and got into the car. He pulled away from the curb and she sat awkwardly for a moment, not knowing what to say next.

"My name's Tina," she finally offered.

"That's not going to matter." He reached over and laid a hand on her arm, and she felt a buzz followed by a wave of tingling that seemed to flow over her. She sunk back against the seat, feeling suddenly drowsy and weak, her eyes slipping shut.

 

Back on the curb two of the other women were watching intently. "Did you see that new girl get picked up?" 

"Yeah, what luck, her first night out. It's disgusting when they go for the young ones like that." She shivered, remembering some awful experience in her past.

"Well, I'll bet he was rich, did you see that car? I hope she comes back tomorrow and lets us know what she got for her trouble." The other replied. 

***********

The bearded man stood in a small room in a basement. The room was filled with electronic equipment. There was a workbench, covered with circuit boards, soldering equipment, wires, capacitors, and other little electrical components. Sitting on another workbench nearby was the result of all his labor. All his years of tinkering and experimenting had been aimed at producing this machine. It resembled a small generator, but with a ‘V’ of metal rods poking out of the top of it, like an old-fashioned TV set. 

He picked up two wristbands, which were attached to the machine by thick wires, and slipped them onto his wrists, tightening them to ensure the metal buttons inside the bands made good contact with his skin. He reached out and pushed a rocker switch with his thumb and power began to flow through the machine with a low, thrumming hum. The basement lights dimmed and the only light came from the flickering blue light of the sparks that crackled up between the vertical rods. 

A familiar buzz shook him as the energy entered his body through the metal buttons in the wrist straps. His skin would have burned had it not already been toughened with thick scar tissue that had developed from repeated use of the machine. He felt a fullness in his body and his heart fluttered as it received random electrical pulses. He delighted in the feeling, feeling the power build and feeling his body's living reaction to it. Finally he reached the rocker switch with a shaking hand and the machine turned off. The basement lights came back up. He shakily removed the wristbands and rubbed his hands together for a minute, feeling the shivers run up his arms from the electricity he had absorbed. 

He heard a crash in the other room and went to investigate.

***********

She awoke in a darkened room, a bright light hanging over her. She felt a metal table under her back, her naked body covered only by a thin, white sheet which was pulled up and covered her face. She pulled it down quickly, afraid for a second that she was dead, but her gasping breaths reassured her that she was still alive. The room was chilled, like a morgue, and she shivered under the unprotective cover. For a minute the lights dimmed considerably and then came back to full brightness. She heard a buzzing sound coming from outside the room, and she wondered what kind of place this was. With a touch of panic, she sat up and looked around, wondering how she had arrived here after being picked up by the stranger in the car. Stars danced before her eyes for a moment as the blood struggled to reach her head after laying flat for so long, and her heart began to pound in fear and confusion. 

There were five other metal tables in the room, each positioned in a pool of bright light from dangling, hooded ceiling lamps. On the tables were four other people, each covered from head to toe by a white sheet, bringing to mind creepy old horror movies she had liked to watch with her sister. They had been fun to watch, curled up together in the basement of her parent's house, but she was horrified to see she now seemed to be in one. She quickly gathered her sheet around her, though her fingers felt rubbery and hard to use, and swung her legs over the side of the table.

The table was too high for her to easily reach her feet to the ground, so she jumped off, feeling her feet slap against the cold stone floor. Her knees nearly buckled and her legs felt wobbly, but she ignored it and moved on. She was almost afraid to breathe as she approached the nearest table. Pulling back the sheet revealed a young man, near her own age. She touched him and received a mild static shock, which made her yelp in surprise. Forcing herself to be calm, she laid her hand on his arm again and found he was warm, and not dead, though his shallow breathing scarcely gave that away. Gingerly, she poked his arm with her fingers, hoping to get a response. "Hello?" she said, her voice small and weak in the huge empty room. "Can you wake up? I don't know where we are."

There was no response from him, so she went to the next table. Here was an older man. A sheet covered his body, though it was stained and rumpled. She reached out to touch him, to see if he would wake up and help her. He was rough looking, covered with tattoos, and, she realized as her fingers pressed against his skin, stone cold.

She gasped, almost screamed, and backed away from the table so fast she bumped into the boy's table behind her. The table moved enough to upset an industrial-looking floor lamp that was standing behind it, and it fell to the floor and shattered with an echoing crash. She backed away from it, looking around in terror. There was a door at the end of the room and she felt sure someone would come to investigate the noise. She ran to it, hoping to escape before anyone had a chance to come in. Wrestling with the doorknob for a moment, she pulled it open and began to charge through..

..into the arms of the man who had brought her here.

He grabbed her, holding her small arms with his bare hands and squeezed. She felt a powerful shock of electricity where he touched her, burning her, leaving the scent of singed flesh in the air. Before she could protest, her legs buckled and her back went numb, leaving her slumped helplessly in his hands like a rag doll. 

"Now, where were you going, little girl?" His voice was angry and threatening, conveying the hatred that welled up within him at the thought that she had tried to defy him. He shook her limp body to accentuate each word. "I'm not done with you yet." She felt consciousness slipping away as he threw her over his shoulder and carried her back into the room.


	2. Chapter 2

Washington, DC  
FBI Headquarters  
June 17, 10:07am

Assistant Director Skinner looked at the paperwork on his desk without really seeing it, and looked at his watch again. He had called a meeting at ten AM, and he didn't expect to be kept waiting. Finally, his phone buzzed and his secretary announced that Agents Mulder and Scully were in the outer office. He thanked her and went back to looking at the paperwork. Now it's their turn to wait, he thought.

After another ten minutes he went to the door and signaled them to come in. They quietly filed into his office, Mulder first, and seated themselves in front of his desk. He was pleased by their suitably submissive behavior. Apparently being made to wait had conveyed his disappointment with their lateness sufficiently. He sat back down behind his desk and opened a case file.

"Good morning, agents. I hope you can make it on time next time I ask for you."

"Yes, Sir, we apologize for our lateness," Scully said, a little too quickly. Skinner noticed Mulder shooting her a look that said the apology wasn't sanctioned by him. Knowing Mulder, the extra time spent waiting in the outer office had done more to irritate him than to knock him down a notch. 

"I know you two are eager to get the X Files back up and running, but I have another assignment for you first. It looks like it fits nicely into both of your areas of expertise."

"And what would that be, sir?" Mulder was sitting back in the chair, hands in his lap, but his demeanor said in no uncertain terms that nothing was more important than getting the X Files back on track, anything else was not worthy of his attention.

"There's been a series of murders in Seattle. Eight so far. In each case the victim has been found with various body parts or organs removed with surgical precision. The Seattle FBI office has requested our assistance." He looked from one agent to the other. There was no reaction from Scully, she was patiently waiting to hear more. Mulder, however, was fidgeting in his seat. 

"Is this not interesting enough for you, Agent Mulder?" Skinner got up and walked around to the front of his desk and sat on the edge, towering over the seated agents. 

"The Seattle office should be able to handle it. What do you need us on this for? We should continue working on recovering the X Files." Mulder was trying to keep the disdain out of his voice, but it was clearly coming through. "My life's work is in a charred heap, no one else is going to put it back together."

Skinner let him have his say, and waited for a moment after he stopped to let the silence settle over the room. Scully shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She looked at Mulder and he looked back at her, and even though nobody's lips were moving, Skinner knew they were having an argument in the silence. 

He cleared his throat and their attention snapped back to him. "Well, Agent Mulder, this might not be what you prefer to investigate, but the police still need some solid leads to catch this monster before he strikes again. They've requested we provide a profiler to look over the evidence and weigh the circumstances surrounding each victim, and give them a direction to go in looking for this guy." 

"Furthermore, the King County Medical Examiner's Office has requested some assistance in examining the victims, seeing as how they don't want to risk destroying any valuable evidence through mishandling." He looked at Scully. "Now, where do you think I could find a team consisting of a top-notch profiler and one of our best forensic pathologists?"

"But sir, there's so much work to do here," Mulder protested again.

"Yes, but there are people dying in Seattle, and we can help stop it. I would think you would want to help out where you could." Skinner lowered his voice, which was more intimidating than raising it would have been. "Additionally, you two haven't come out of this unscathed. Just because they are considering reopening the X Files doesn't mean you're out of the woods with those in authority positions around here. Far from it. There are some who'd still like to see you shut down. Permanently."

"How does sending us to Seattle help that?" Scully asked.

"Because I want everyone to see that you two are still valuable assets. If you go to Seattle, cooperate with the regional field office agents and the county resources, and catch the killer, it's going to look good for both of you." He looked from one to the other and saw he had gotten their attention. "What's good for you is good for me, agents. Don't screw this one up. Get out there and find the killer." 

He handed Scully an abbreviated case file and returned to his seat behind the desk. "You can study that on the way there and catch up on the story so far. Stop by the travel office and they should have your tickets ready. You're flying out today. You're dismissed." He turned his attention to the paperwork on his desk and didn't look as they got up and quietly left his office.


	3. Chapter 3

Seattle, WA  
FBI Field Office  
June 17, 6:00pm

The Seattle FBI field office was bustling with activity when Mulder pulled open the door and held it for his partner. They checked in at the front desk and waited in the busy lobby for the agent in charge of the case to come out and meet them. After a few minutes Mulder was relieved when the door opened and a familiar face strode out to greet them. 

It had been a couple years since they had met Agent Willmore, after he was assigned to find them when they disappeared in the Seattle area. He had done an excellent job, not only finding and rescuing them, but helping them finish their own investigation. He had gotten entangled in things no one outside the X Files division had ever encountered. Because of that he probably knew better than anyone the kinds of things they had to deal with, but he handled it professionally and kept his mouth shut. Both of them had respected him for that.

"Agent Willmore, how have you been?" Mulder reached out to shake his hand first, intercepting Willmore's move towards Agent Scully. Willmore smiled, a big genuine grin. He was easily as tall as Mulder, broad shouldered and built solid, 

"Agent Mulder, fine, fine. I've been hearing about you two. You always seem to be in the thick of things. That was quite a mess in Dallas, and I heard you both were in the middle of it." At the mention of Dallas, Mulder cringed a little and glanced at Scully. Dallas, of course. Fail to stop one terrorist bombing, and suddenly everyone knows your name.

"We were there," Mulder nodded, finally dropping his hand and allowing Willmore to move on to greet Scully.

"We're looking forward to helping you with this case, Agent Willmore. I hope we can be of some assistance," she offered as she shook Willmore's offered hand. Mulder immediately noticed that finding Willmore in charge seemed to have brightened Scully's spirits considerably. During their last encounter she had reported back that she had found Willmore to be flexible, resourceful, and persistent. 

"We appreciate the help. The medical examiner has the last two victims in cold storage waiting for you. You can start on them tonight or wait until morning if you want." He turned to Mulder. "I need you to help us canvas the street tonight looking for anyone who knew the latest victim, a transient. We're hoping someone will have gotten a glimpse of the killer. I wouldn't ask you to do grunt work, I know you're here to profile the killer, but we're short-handed this week. We've got some other big things going down around here, and we're spread thin."

Mulder nodded. "I can help you do that. When do we start?"

"Well, you and Agent Scully might want to go find some dinner and meet me back here in.. oh, say about an hour?" He looked at Agent Scully again. "If you don't want to start the medical exams tonight you're welcome to join us on the street search too."

"Actually, we had a bite on the plane. I'd like to get started on the examinations. If you can just give me directions to the Medical Examiner's office, I'll head over there now." Willmore went to the front desk and spoke to the secretary for a moment and came back with a one-page map and directions for her.

"There you go. Here's my card as well, so if you need to contact me for any reason, use my cell number." She took them with a quick thank you, and after looking over the card quickly, stuffed it in her pocket.

She turned to Mulder and held her hand out, and as he dropped the rental car keys into it their eyes met for a fraction of a second. They had had a long argument on the plane about this case taking precedence over the X Files. Mulder thought it was someone's way of preventing them from resuming their more important investigations. Her opinion had been that they had better concentrate and be on their best behavior here, live up to Skinner's expectations, and that it would grease the wheels back at headquarters for the ongoing support of their investigations. Somewhere over the Midwest he had finally agreed, reluctantly, and assured her he would be on his best behavior. Now, as she caught his eye, he gave her a slight nod, assuring her of his continued cooperation. Without further comment she strode out of the lobby, leaving Mulder and Willmore to their work.

"Well, would you like to look over the case files until it's time to head out?" Willmore finally said, leading him back to where the offices were. 

"Sure. I had the chance to look over an abbreviated file AD Skinner gave us, but it'll be good to start reading up on the details." 

"Make yourself comfortable in here," Willmore led him to a conference room and left him there for a moment, returning with a pile of folders. "These are the complete files. If you need anything, my office is straight across the hall."

"Thanks," Mulder took off his jacket and sat down, putting on a pair of reading glasses and pulling the first folder on the pile down to look at.


	4. Chapter 4

King County Medical Examiner's Office  
June 17, 8:10pm

Scully looked at the cadaver that was laid out in front of her. An assistant, a young medical student named Tom Peterson, had been assigned to her, and was busy arranging the corpse on the table, placing a form under the head to hold it at the correct angle for the autopsy. In his late-twenties, clean cut with sandy blond hair, he was the stereotypical student, very serious, trying to be professional beyond his years. Scully enjoyed his attention, feeling like an instructor again as he hung on her every word, carefully watching her every move. 

The victim, an approximately 45 year old white male, covered in tattoos, had been a transient. Presumably he was the one Mulder would be out asking about this evening, looking for someone who had known this man well enough to know who he was last seen with, what he had been doing. She thought about all the forgotten people living on the street, the poorest of the poor, the mentally ill, the addicted, the runaways. They were easy pickings for predators, desperate and willing to follow anyone for the promise of a little money, drugs, or whatever they craved.

This man had obviously gotten a lot more than he bargained for. From the track marks on his arms she guessed he was heavily drug addicted, though she would have to wait for the tests from the lab to know what he was addicted to. Not that it mattered much now, except to add to their knowledge of the killer's methods. Whatever the killer had lured him with, instead of receiving money or drugs, he had been subjected to unnecessary surgeries. 

"The killer's technique seems to be very professional," Scully said for the microphone hanging above the table, recording her findings so they could be transcribed later. "The cuts look like they were made with a scalpel, neat and straight with fairly sharp edges, indicating the blade was dulled. The cuts are sutured, and all three show evidence of infection, though in varying degrees of severity. The severity of the infection may indicate the age of the incisions." Peterson stood on the other side of the table, watching her every move as she probed the incisions and reported her conclusions.

"What do you make of that?" He pointed at the oldest sutured incision, the one that showed the greatest level of infection.

"Well," she pried at it with a probe, "Disturbingly, these show signs of beginning healing, indicating the victim was kept alive for several days while this was being done to him. I'd say this incision is as much as a week old." She used a large magnifying lamp to closely examine each cut once again, thinking about the purpose of each, and the motivations of the surgeon who did them. 

She carefully continued her external examination of the body, lifting the arms and examining the length of them. She stopped at two small circular marks, approximately one centimeter each, separated by an inch. She pulled the magnifying lamp over them, examining them under the bright light. 

"Tom, can you get some photos of this?" She pointed it out to him. He nodded and retrieved the camera, carefully photographing the marks from a couple different angles.

"What do you think those were caused by?" Peterson asked, stepping back from the table to give her room.

"They look like stun gun burns, though I can't be sure yet." She continued examining the body, but encountered no other abnormalities hidden among the tattoos and track marks. Finally she stepped back to make some notes in her personal observation log. "That concludes the external exam, Tom. Go ahead and make the 'Y' incision and we'll begin the internal exam."


	5. Chapter 5

Somewhere in Seattle  
June 17, 8:00PM

The first thing she realized as she drifted out of the dreamless sleep was that her arms hurt. They stung and ached with a deep pain that frightened her as soon as she became aware of it. She struggled to open her eyes, and realized that the light over her table had been turned off, leaving the room dark except for the light over the boy's table, about ten feet away from hers. The table that had had the dead man on it was empty, and she wondered how much time had passed since she was awake. 

She turned her head enough to see the boy, but kept her eyes squinted nearly shut. She didn't want to attract the attention of the man who held her captive. She was sure that if she lifted the sheet to look, there would be two ugly wounds on her arms, which he had done with his bare hands. She could feel the sheet irritating her where it touched her arms, but she tried not to think about it.

She saw the boy stirring, and her heart suddenly filled with hope. Maybe the two of them together could fight their way out of here. She watched as he reached up and wiped his face with his hand, and then looked around the room. For a moment they made eye contact and stared at each other, like two lost people running into each other in the woods, all desperation and hope at having found a kindred soul.

Before they could exchange any words the door to the room opened, and the man stepped in. Wearing a long lab coat, which went all the way to his knees, he looked very doctor-like as he strode across the room to the boy's table. She closed her eyes, and listened as his footsteps stopped a short distance away from her. Feeling sure he wasn't looking at her, she opened her eyes just enough to see what he was doing. His back was to her as he stood over the young man on the neighboring table.

"So, how are you today? I see you're awake." There was no concern in the man's voice, just a cold curiosity. The boy looked back at him, but said nothing.

"Come on, you were so talkative when I found you. Can't you do any better than that?" He pulled the sheet back and roughly pulled the boy into a sitting position. "Come on, speak." He was sounding impatient.

Finally the boy opened his mouth, but only a guttural gurgling sound came out. His eyes filled with shock and his hands reached up to his throat, his mouth moving noiselessly. His fingers found the stitches at the base of his throat and his expression turned to horror. The man laughed, a terrible, grating sound.

"Yeah, no more of that from you. After those names you called me, I thought you needed something a little more drastic than just washing your mouth out with soap." The boy coughed and gurgled, working his mouth and throat despirately. Nothing but a wet sputtering came out. 

The boy's expression shifted to hatred, and his eyes were locked on the man. He jumped off the table with surprising speed, lunging for the man's face, but his legs collapsed under him, throwing his full weight onto the man. He was thrown off by the attack and fell backwards, his arms pinwheeling in an attempt to keep his balance, which failed. 

On the floor, the boy jumped on top of him, beating him, scratching at his face, all the time making an inhuman hissing noise that seemed to come straight from his gut. No doubt it would have been a scream, if there had still been vocal   
chords to mold it into one. The man writhed under him, surprised by the ferocity of the attack. The girl was just getting up the courage to jump off the table and join in the fray when she saw the man's hand slip into his coat pocket and pull out a scalpel. She froze in place.

The man brought the scalpel up between them and slashed a deep diagonal cut across the boy's chest. The boy stiffened and froze in pain for an instant before continuing the fight. He grabbed at the hand wielding the scalpel, trying to stop its motion, but the boy was weak, and growing weaker as his blood was pouring out onto the killer's body under him. He struggled to grab the man's arms. 

The man pulled back and stabbed the scalpel deep into the boy's chest, just below the ribs, angled up towards the heart, and twisted it with both hands. The boy froze in pain, a curious look coming over his face, as if he was surprised by this new sensation. He released the doctor's arms, his hands shaking and pawing at the air for an instant, his full body weight on the madman's hands as the scalpel dug deep into his vital organs. With a shiver that coursed through his entire body, he went limp. The killer threw the body off to the side and jumped to his feet.

In a panic, adrenaline pulsing through him, he tried to brush the boy's blood off his coat, but only succeeded in wiping it around with his hands. There was too much of it. Panting, he looked at the blood pooled on the floor and still draining from the boy, and shook his head, started to turn away and then turned back, as if he didn't know what to do. He stomped over to the boy's body and stood over it.

"What did you do that for?" He screamed at the body, and stomped his foot, splashing in the expanding puddle of blood. "You weren't supposed to do that. That's not supposed to happen, God damn it!" He wiped a bloody hand through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead, slicking it with the blood. Putting his hands on his hips, he paced around again, coming back to stand over the body. "I'm supposed to save you, heal you. God damn it!" He paced around again, never taking his eyes off the boy for long. Finally he turned and stomped out the door, leaving bloody footprints behind in a wet, crimson trail.

When the door clicked shut, the girl took a deep shuddering breath, having been afraid to make a noise until then. She pulled the sheet up over her head, and tried not to make a sound as she lay shaking on the table and cried.


	6. Chapter 6

Super 8 Motor Inn  
June 18, 1:00 AM

Willmore pulled up to the motor inn and waited with his engine idling while Mulder reached into the back seat for his jacket and got out. 

"Thanks for the lift, Willmore." 

"No problem. Good job tonight, Mulder. Maybe by morning we'll have a drawing of the guy to start showing around." Mulder nodded at him and walked to his motel room, digging for his keys as Willmore pulled away.

Willmore drove around the parking lot and was waiting to pull out onto the street when he looked into his rearview mirror and noticed Mulder was knocking on the door of a unit with darkened windows. A light came on and the door opened for him, and he slipped inside. 

Willmore stared at the door for a moment, wondering if there was something un-partnerly going on there. There was no question the little redhead was attractive, but the last time he had seen her, he wouldn't exactly have described her as a bubbling personality. If anything, he had found her serious, business-like, and professional in the extreme, exactly the opposite of wisecracking Mulder, and a little bit unnerving. He couldn't imagine anything going on with those two.   
But still...

Another car pulled up behind him in the driveway, and with a honk, prompted him to get moving, but like any good investigator, he stocked away the bit of information for later.

*****

"I woke you," Mulder stated, walking into Scully's room and depositing his file folders on the table. She shook her head and rubbed a hand over her eyes, blinking in the light from the nightstand lamp she had switched on when he knocked. She was wearing soft, silky-looking pajamas, her feet were bare and her hair was tousled. He couldn't hide the smile it brought to him, and it carried over into his voice. "You look like I woke you." He left his jacket and tie on the table as well and quietly joined her, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"No. I just was lying down, wondering how your night was going."

"We found a guy who knew the victim and saw him with a man a couple weeks ago. The witness is with the police artist now making a sketch of the suspect. The last time anyone saw the victim he was going with this guy to do some work to earn money for his drug habit. "

"Well, unless 'guinea pig' is a line of work, I'd say things didn't turn out the way he expected." She flopped back on the bed, gathering a pillow up and pulling it under her head. Mulder stretched out lazily beside her, and she rolled onto her side so she could see him. He tried to ignore the way her top rode up on her, exposing her soft, flat stomach. He kept his mind off of it by keeping the conversation on business. 

"Well, don't keep me in suspense," he asked. "What did you find?"

"The victim had had multiple operations performed, the incisions were partially healed, indicating he was kept alive for at least a week after the first operation." She rolled onto her back and ran a hand through her hair, thinking about the autopsy. "He had a number of procedures done to him, including removal of the kidneys, spleen, a portion of the liver, and complete removal of the testicles. It might be a black market body parts scheme, but the organs taken weren't generally the kinds in demand for transplants or even for medical study, and more valuable organs were left intact. It was almost like they were removed just to see how long the patient could survive without them."

Mulder grimaced. "I read over the other autopsy reports for the first six victims. They were all similar. There were multiple operations performed on each. As many as four operations per victim."

"The thing that bothered me most was I couldn't find any other signs of abuse. There were no marks on wrists or ankles from being bound, no bruises from beatings. The only thing I found was two small burn marks that looked like they were made by a stun gun. I'm hoping the lab can find some traces of whatever was used as an anesthetic for the operations, since that might help us track the killer down."

"Did you determine a cause of death?"

"I don't have a conclusive cause of death yet, though it was cardiac in nature. The victim was suffering from a severe infection caused by unsanitary conditions during the surgeries, or poor post-op care, which could have caused heart failure, depending on the toxicity of the infection."

"What kind of person does this," he asked, mostly to himself.

"A very talented one. I'd say he's a doctor, almost certainly a surgeon. He did a very neat job of all his work." She yawned, trying to hide it behind her hand, but Mulder could tell she was beat for the day. Back home it was almost four AM, so he supposed she had a right to be tired. 

He laid there for a couple minutes, thinking about the case, and he noticed her eyes drifted shut, her lips parted just a little, her breathing slow and steady. He felt a peacefulness flow over him as he watched her. Over the past five years his partner had become indispensible to his work, and to his life. The events of the past summer, the rescue in Antarctica, had pushed them together. He felt closer to her than ever, and their relationship was shifting in ways he wasn't expecting. He felt himself in uncharted territory. 

He weighed his options; return to his room and work on the case or lay here all night watching her. It was a close call. Finally, he got up and collected his things off the table. Awakened by the shifting of the bed, she rolled onto her side and drowsily watched him, but didn't move to get up. 

"Ok, I'll see you for breakfast and we can discuss the rest of it. Come lock the door behind me," he said quietly, not wanting to wake her fully. She nodded and got up, slowly padding barefoot across the worn carpet to the door. He looked down at her and pulled her into his arms before leaving, lingering just a moment, enjoying the still new sensation of her arms around his waist and her body held close. He bent down and laid a gentle kiss on her lips, prompting a sleepy smile from her. 

"g'night, Mulder," she finally mumbled, pushing him towards the door.

Outside he waited until he heard her throw the deadbolt on the door, and then returned to his own room. Maybe this case was going to be more challenging than he had anticipated, he thought. A surgeon for a killer, probably very intelligent, covering his tracks. Mulder was already well into theories for his profile when he turned on his laptop and sat down to type.


	7. Chapter 7

Mercer Island, WA   
June 18, 7:00am

"Thank you for the help, Dr. Winston." Tom Peterson picked up his books and gathered his papers back into his backpack. "I really appreciate you answering these questions, especially so early."

"It's no problem, Tom. You're a good man, I think you'll make a good doctor someday." Winston picked up the coffee cups from the table and slowly walked them to the kitchen. 

His house was large and lavish, the result of many years of being a well paid neuro-surgeon. Until his hands had begun to shake a couple of years ago, he had been one of the most respected surgeons at Harborview, the pride of the Seattle medical community. When he had lost his job, with it had gone his standing in the medical community and his young trophy-wife. Now he lived off his savings and doddered around his house alone, trying not to break anything, occasionally getting visits from some of the young students he had taken under his wing before his abrupt retirement. Tom was one of his last, and without a doubt his favorite.

"Still, sir, I just want you to know how much your mentoring means to me."

"It's my way of giving back. How's your job going?" Winston carefully rinsed the coffee cups and gently placed them on the drainer next to the sink. He moved slowly and methodically to avoid dropping them with his gently shaking hands.

"Excellent. Of course, I have you to thank for that too. I would never have gotten the appointment to the MEs office without your recommendation." Winston nodded his head and smiled, though it was almost hidden behind his thick salt and pepper beard. He led the way back out to the living room. "The local police have called in the FBI to help them catch this serial killer they're after. I got assigned to assist the FBI's Forensic Pathologist they brought in from DC." Peterson was nearly bursting with pride.

"Excellent. That's a good way to get noticed. Maybe you will join the FBI some day, if your interest truly lies there."

"I was questioning it, watching her autopsy those victims, but I think it's my main interest. I want to help the victims get the justice they deserve."

"That's noble of you. What have you found out from these victims?"

"The killer has been doing medical experiments on them. They haven't determined an exact cause of death yet, though."

"Well, keep after it. There's always a cause."

They walked to the front door, and Winston held it open. "Thanks for running those errands for me last night, Tom. I can't get out much anymore, and I appreciate the help."

"It was no problem. Thank you for letting me use your car again. That's a hell of a machine. They don't make them like that anymore. What is it again, a '67?"

"1968. The best year for the Camaro in my opinion. I just wish I could still enjoy it. I'm glad to see it hit the road now and again though." He looked down at his hand, lying on the doorknob, shaking vigorously of it's own accord, and frowned. It was like a curse, he thought. First it ran off his career, then his wife, and now it waved like a flag, telling everyone who could see that he was a doddering old man. "Well, have a good day. Come again soon, Tom. I enjoy the company."

The younger man smiled and walked out to the driveway, shaded from the morning light by the tall trees surrounding the drive. He waved as he got in his dilapidated Honda and drove away.


	8. Chapter 8

Super 8 Motel  
June 18, 8:00am

It was a brilliant, blue-sky morning, pacific-northwest style. The air was cool, with just a hint of moisture, and the smell of the sea wafted in off Puget Sound, bringing to mind fishing boats and shipyards. It was mornings like this that made Agent Willmore appreciate living in Seattle. They were almost enough to make him forget the side of the city he was forced to deal with everyday. Almost. He took a deep breath and knocked on the motel room door.

"Who is it?" Mulder's voice shouted from the other side.

"Willmore."

After a moment he heard the lock click and the door swung open. Mulder was still wearing the same suit Willmore had left him in last night, but the tie was gone and the collar was undone. He had on his reading glasses again, and Willmore could see his laptop open on the wrinkled, still-made bed, making him wonder where he'd spent the night.

"Well, you're an early riser," Willmore commented as Mulder stepped aside so he could enter. Mulder pulled off his glasses, tossing them down next to the laptop, and rubbed his eyes.

"Actually, I got going on the profile last night and didn't go to bed. After I talked to Agent Scully about her findings, I wanted to get right on it while I had some ideas to jot down." He shut down the computer and disappeared into the bathroom. After a few minutes he came out, changed his shirt and selected a tie from his suitcase. "Good enough," he said, glancing in the mirror. "Lets go. Can we get some coffee on our way to the office?" He picked up the laptop and had his hand on the door before Willmore could react.

"Uh, yeah, sure. What about Agent Scully?" He stammered.

"She left for the ME's office an hour ago. She's still running on Eastern Time. Just give her a cup of coffee in the morning and off she goes." He smirked at him. "Let's get going. She'll meet us at the office when she's done."

"OK, but we aren't going to the office." Willmore said quickly. Mulder looked at him surprised, a suspicious caution flashing over his features. "There's been another victim discovered down by Boeing Field. The scene is secured and we're going down there to check it out." Mulder's face fell. 

"The victims are being found with an increasing frequency. He must be feeling more confident. It's almost guaranteed he's going to leave an important clue, get sloppy. Maybe we'll get lucky this time."

"I hope so," Willmore said, leading him out to the car. "At this rate he's going to surpass the Green River Killer for the area's most infamous serial killer, and I don't intend to stand by and watch him set that record."


	9. Chapter 9

Boeing Field  
June 18, 9:45AM

With an earsplitting whine the jet plane lifted off the tarmac and pointed it's nose to the sky, thundering over the heads of the assorted FBI agents and Seattle Police gathered just past the security fence at the end of the runway. Mulder looked up at it, annoyed, covering the mouthpiece of his cell phone and waiting for it to get far enough away for him to speak again.

"Scully, can you hear me?" He shouted into the phone, shooting another annoyed look at the plane. "OK, here, talk to Willmore, he'll explain how to get out here. It's just off Interstate 5, south of where you are. You shouldn't have any problem finding it." He handed the phone to Willmore.

After being stuck in traffic for the better part of an hour, they had arrived to find the police investigators were still examining the crime scene. The police had already been there for several hours, so the FBI agents hung back out of the way and waited for the tedious job of documenting the area and collecting initial evidence to be finished.

"She's on her way. I told her a route that should help her avoid most of the traffic. She should be here in a half-hour if she doesn't get lost." Willmore passed the phone back to him. Mulder nodded, but said nothing, looking toward where the corpse was laid out in the tall grass. He hadn't gotten close enough to see it yet, but he knew where it was. It was the center of attention, after all. Ironic, considering the victims had so far all come from the fringes of society, it was probably the most attention this guy had ever gotten.

The sun had begun to beat down on them, and Mulder had already ditched his suit jacket in favor of rolled-up shirtsleeves. He was grateful to discover Willmore had an extra pair of sunglasses in his glove box, so while the police did their work, Mulder and Willmore leaned against the car and looked the part of Feds waiting their turn. 

"So what's your profile looking like so far?" Willmore asked.

Mulder was quiet for a minute, thinking. "Well, we're fairly certain we're looking for a male, just because of the sheer strength needed to haul around the victims we've found so far. Scully noted substantial technical expertise in the procedures performed on the victims, which would indicate someone close to the medical profession, probably a surgeon. It's unlikely he's currently practicing, or he would be satisfying his desires to operate in other ways. As it is, he cannot fill those needs without capturing 'patients' from the fringes of society. Because of the skill level I'm thinking it might be someone who's recently lost his license, or a medical student. I've got a lot of other theories, but I'm waiting to talk to Scully before I settle on those. There's a lot to be learned by examining how he chose the victims, what he used to lure them, and why and how he finally killed them."

"Didn't you talk to her last night after you got back to the hotel?"

"Yeah, but she fell asleep before she could fill me in on everything she found, and this morning she was eager to get back to the ME's Office and check something out, so she wasn't in the mood to talk."

Willmore was quiet for a second. "You're pretty close to her, aren't you?" Mulder smiled, his eyes hidden behind the sunglasses, still watching the investigators combing the area around the body.

"She's my partner, Willmore." 

"Well, for example, could I ask her out if I wanted to?" Mulder glanced at him for an instant and then looked away. He had seen this before. Willmore was angling to dig around and uncover any hint of a relationship. Instead of the jealous reaction he might have been hoping for, Mulder just shut it down with a chuckle.

"You can try anything you want, Willmore, but remember, she's armed."

A policeman came over to them, interrupting them. "You the Feds?" They both nodded, inadvertently moving in synch. The policeman looked at them, a little nervous. "Well, they're ready for you over there," he gestured back to the crime scene. 

Mulder ducked under the police tape and stepped carefully through the now trampled knee-high grass, following a path broken by the earlier investigators, and stood over the body of the latest victim. Number Nine, he thought, a cold designation for someone's child. He looked at the body of the young man, probably only fourteen or fifteen years old, laid out naked on the ground in a peaceful repose, like a body in a casket. His body showed evidence of sutured incisions in several different places, including one on the throat, but unlike the other victims, this one had been badly cut up before death. A long cut crossed his chest and abdomen, and a stab wound below the ribs looked like a fatal blow. The killer had attempted to clean off all the blood, but there had obviously been a lot of it, and it was smeared all over the body. Mulder took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. 

His phone rang and he snatched it from the clip on his belt, glad for the excuse to walk away from the crime scene. The trampled grass crunched under his feet and brushed his pant legs as he moved away from the rest of the officers, who were gathered by the edge of the grass making casts of tire tracks in the soft dirt.

"Mulder."

"Mulder, it's me. I'm stuck in traffic. Looks like construction. How's it going there?"

"It looks like the latest victim is a young male, fourteen or so. Same as the others. He's been subjected to several surgeries, all of which are neatly sewn up, and carefully laid out in a ritualized funeral-style pose. The major difference seems to be he was badly cut up and stabbed, possibly the cause of death." He tried to keep his voice sarcastically light, but it had a frustrated edge to it. He stopped and looked at the ground, one hand on his hip, one clutching the cell phone to his ear. He closed his eyes.

"Mulder, are you ok?"

He stood still for a second, thinking. "I'm fine, Scully. I hate profiling." He spoke quietly and looked back over his shoulder to where Willmore was examining the area around the body with a police detective, pointing and looking at the investigator's notes regarding evidence they had gathered.

"I know, Mulder. Just hang in there through one more. We'll make everyone happy back in DC and get back to our work." Her gentle voice stabilized him, and he liked the way she said 'our work'.

"Did you finish your second exam?" He changed the subject and began walking back to the corpse.

"No, we put it back in the fridge. I'll finish this afternoon. Oh, the traffic's starting to move. I'll see you in ten, Mulder." He heard the phone click off before he was ready, and he suddenly felt very alone. 

He clipped the phone back onto his belt and squatted down next to the boy's body, wondering how the mind of the killer worked, what kind of fantasies he had satisfied by performing these operations. 

Another jet roared low overhead, or maybe it was the same one making a second pass. Either way, it drowned out all other sounds and Mulder closed his eyes, thinking about what kind of mind you would have to have to do this to a boy. 

How did he choose them?

There had only been male victims so far, perhaps the good doctor had been abused as a child by a male relative. All had been picked up off the street. All had been people who wouldn't be missed.

And what about cutting them up and then closing the wounds? He didn't need to open his eyes to see the carefully stitched sutures on the boy's body. Was he practicing, taking revenge, trying to help them somehow, playing with them like a cat with a mouse, keeping them alive until he tired of them? 

How did he subdue them? 

How did he keep them sedated? 

Where did he get the drugs to anesthetize them? 

Why did he tire of his victims and kill them after taking care of them for days? 

Why had he killed this one in such an obvious way? Was he escalating the violence of the fantasy he was playing out, or had something gone wrong?

Mulder's mind tossed the questions out and tried to answer them, one after the other, until he was completely absorbed in the details and the process of catching, hiding, mutilating and killing, forgetting where he was. The images rolled around in his head and he tried to organize them and make some sense of them, trying to put together how the killer's mind worked. Trying to find logic behind the insanity. Trying to predict what the killer would do next.

 

Ten minutes later Scully arrived and saw the other officers gathered in a small group in the tall grass adjacent to the security fence at the end of the runway. She walked over to them, expecting to find her partner but only recognized Willmore.

"Agent Willmore, where's Agent Mulder?" She noticed all the officers were looking towards the same place off in the tall grass, past the yellow ribbons, quietly talking among themselves, and occasionally gesturing in that direction.

"Over there." Willmore jerked his head in the direction where everyone was looking. 

Concerned, Scully hurried through the grass, following the tamped down path, only to find Mulder squatting down next to the body of a naked boy. His hands hung limply between his knees and his eyes were clenched shut behind the dark sunglasses. She said his name and put a hand on his shoulder. He startled, opening wild eyes to look at her as if she were a stranger. He suddenly jumped up and began moving backwards, away from the corpse, away from her. He moved so quickly he turned, stumbled, and fell to his knees. He was quickly back on his feet and staggered a little further away before stopping, hunched over and resting his hands on his thighs, breathing hard as if awakening from a nightmare.

Willmore appeared next to Scully, surprising her. She was still watching Mulder with concern, but she spared a worried glance at Willmore, which was enough to encourage him to talk.

"He came over here about ten minutes ago, and he didn't move until now. He wouldn't respond to anyone talking to him. It was like he was in a trance. It was..." He struggled for the word.

"Spooky?" she finished the thought for him.

"Well, yeah. What the hell's going on?"

"He's just doing what he needs to do, Willmore." She said cryptically, and walked away to join her partner.


	10. Chapter 10

Seattle FBI Field Office  
June 18, 3:00PM

Mulder peered through his glasses at the laptop's screen, hit the backspace key a few times and continued typing. He made a point not to notice Willmore watching him from the doorway, instead shuffling through his notes. There was something about the victims. They had all been picked up near Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle, a seedy place, a good place to pick up people who wouldn't be missed. He returned to his keyboard, organizing and evaluating the details he hoped would lead them to the killer. 

Willmore couldn't stand being ignored anymore. "Agent Mulder?"

"Yes, Willmore, what can I do for you?" He didn't look up from the laptop, hoping the other agent would leave if he made himself unapproachable enough. He knew his behavior at the crime scene was the talk of the office, but hoped a thorough profile would erase any question of his abilities. On top of that, he was exhausted from skipping sleep last night and weary from thinking about the vicious mutilations all day. He was in no mood to deal with anyone else.

"How's the profile going?" 

"I think we're close to finishing it. I should have it done by morning."

"I'd like to call a meeting to present it to the troops. We just finished an Asian gang bust down in Tacoma and the Director is adding those agents to our case. That'll be ten more agents we can use to hunt for this guy." Mulder looked up at him, realizing that none of this was related to his behavior this morning, and thought that perhaps he'd underestimated Willmore. Being treated with respectful professionalism was not something he had had to deal with much lately.

"Set the meeting for 8:00 am and I'll present my profile then. You can fill them in on the rest of the case." 

"What's it shaping up to look like?" Willmore sat on the edge of the table, looking at the notes Mulder had scribbled on a yellow pad.

"Well," Mulder sat back and linked his hands behind his head, stretching. "What I try to look for is some pattern in what the killer is doing. Serial killers tend to perform the same ritual over and over again, playing out some fantasy scene, with the unfortunate victim cast in a part that gives the killer complete control over them. We can see these patterns in the way this killer is picking out people who won't be missed, picking them up from the same area every time, torturing them until they die from the mutilations he performs, and then he finds another victim almost immediately, or maybe even concurrently."

"It doesn't seem like it should be hard to find this guy."

"Except for the fact that most serial killers fall into the top eighty percent of the population, intelligence-wise, and some can even be sociable and charming, so they don't stand out. This killer lives to perform his fantasies, doing whatever needs to be done in the outside world to allow him to continue his covert activities. They often hold down jobs, have families, blend into the community. This guy seems to have medical knowledge, so we have that to go by. We have a rough description from the guy we found last night, and a description of the car. I'd say we're well on our way." 

Willmore nodded, "I'm running the car info now, and I hope we have some names to start checking tomorrow after the briefing, assuming we don't get any other breaks. I think your profile will be invaluable, though. I'm glad they sent you two out to help us. Catching this bastard is my number one priority." He returned to his office. Mulder had barely begun typing again when his cell phone rang, chattering in the large, empty conference room.

"Mulder, it's me." Scully's voice was a welcome comfort. 

"What have you got?" 

"Something weird," she said, mysteriously. 

Mulder smiled. He had been hoping for this. "Well, don't be a tease. What is it?"

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "We found a handprint burned into the arm of the boy we found today."

"Burned?"

"Well, yeah. I think it's an electrical burn, but I've never seen anything like it." She muffled the phone and he barely heard her giving orders to someone on the other end. "Thanks, Tom. Are you still there, Mulder?"

"Oh, yeah, I wouldn't miss this."

"I'm pulling the other bodies out to take a look. It made me think, maybe we missed something. The burns on the other victims may have been faded due to the condition of the bodies. They've been in cold storage for quite a while. I'm thinking the cause of death on these other victims might be electrocution, like a low-current electrical charge strong enough to upset the heart beat, but not leave the kinds of burns you normally see with, oh say, power line accidents. Kind of like a de-fibrillator - but in this case it would be a fibrillator." 

"..but in the shape of a hand?"

"Well, there was that mark that looked like a stun-gun burn on the body I examined yesterday." He could hear her mulling it over, treading carefully with her words. "Maybe this is all related. I'll let you know after we look back over it. Plus I haven't even looked at victim number seven yet. Now that we know what to look for, maybe we can find something there."

"Alright, well, call me when you get something. I'm finishing up the profile for Willmore. He wants to present it to the team in the morning. Let me know if there's anything I should add."

"You'll be the first to know, Mulder." There was a clanging in the background and he heard the phone being muffled again, and her voice scolding someone. "Gotta' go," she said with an exasperation in her voice she usually reserved for him and clicked the phone off before he could answer.


	11. Chapter 11

King County Medical Examiner's Office  
June 18, 8PM

Agent Willmore and Agent Mulder strode into the Medical Examiner's office, flashed their FBI IDs at the front desk, and were directed to one of the autopsy bays in the back of the building. Mulder looked through the glass window in the door of the room before entering, spotting Scully and a young man bent over a small pale body that was stretched out on a metal table. There were two other bodies on gurneys in the room as well, covered with sheets. 

"Looks like the place." Mulder pushed the door open and an indescribably evil smell, something between feces and vomit, or a combination of the two immediately assaulted them. They cringed, swallowed hard, and tried to ignore it, having been exposed to it many times before. When they entered, the sandy-haired young man   
turned around and stared at them for a moment, while Scully barely spared the men a glance. 

"Mulder, Willmore, this is Tom Peterson, my assistant," she said, her voice muffled as she bent back over the corpse. 

The men all nodded at each other in greeting, and Peterson retrieved a small jar of vapo-rub from the counter, offering it to the others to kill the smell. They gladly accepted.

Mulder and Willmore walked around to the other side of the table to get a better look at what Scully was doing. She was working over the body of the boy they had found that morning. They had already performed the autopsy on it, so the torso was disconcertingly sunken, and a 'Y' of thick stitching that reached from the shoulders to the groin held it closed. Hunched over the body, she was examining a dim red smudge on its arm, peering through a large magnifying lens. "Look at this," she said, without looking up. 

She moved aside so Mulder could get close enough to look through the magnifying lens at the burn. Willmore squeezed in between them, putting a hand on Scully's shoulder for balance as he tried to get a look at the burn. She shot him a glance that made him quickly remove his hand and back off a little, waiting his turn.

Mulder peered through the lens. It was clearly a five-fingered hand, nothing too weird about it, except that it was burned into the slightly blistered skin of a mutilated dead boy's arm. He gave a little snort of surprise, and she looked up at him, her blue eyes peeking out from behind the large plastic goggles.

"So, we have a mad doctor, and he has some kind of stun-gun glove he uses to put his victims out of their misery?" Mulder shook his head, thinking that this guy was just getting harder and harder to profile. He stepped aside so Willmore could see.

"I'm not even sure about the glove part, Mulder. I can almost make out the wrinkles in the attacker's palm in the blistered skin here," she took a probe off the tray and pointed out the marks burned into the arm. "I'm not sure how, but it looks to me like it was a bare hand that made this contact. I also found similar marks on the other victims. Even the mark I thought was caused by a stun gun looks to be fingertip marks burned into the skin. We're sending a body to the regional field office in Los Angeles. They have the facilities there to do a search for latent prints on the cadaver's skin." She paused, thinking. "Of course, this burn isn't the cause of death for this victim, the stab wound in the chest was, so why does this body have this burn on it, which looks to be at least a day old?"

"Scully, you know what you're saying?" Mulder tried to get her to look him in the eye. Instead she looked thoughtfully at the corpse and nodded. "You're advocating something pretty unheard of here. Generally that's my job."

"Well, don't get all defensive. I'm sure we'll figure this out and it'll have a reasonable explanation." She let out an exasperated little breath and her words didn't have the confidence they usually did. The reasonable explanations had been few and far between lately, but she didn't plan to give up completely. "Have you gotten   
anywhere?"

"Well," he found a seat on a nearby counter while she began finishing up. "The witness we found worked with the department's police artist to make a rough drawing of the suspect. The most distinctive thing was a full beard and glasses, otherwise he was pretty vague, just saying it was a white male. He couldn't even guess at the age. He also said the man the victim left with was driving a nice classic camaro. And that he thought it was red. Which matches nicely with some carpet fibers that were found on the first body, which were from a manufacturer of auto carpets for the restoration industry."

"A restored, red camaro. That doesn't narrow it down much." She said, stripping off her gloves and adding some observations in a notebook. 

"Worse than you think," Willmore added. "There are lots of classic cars in this area and the police are pretty forgiving about them not being registered, since they don't get used much. However, we got a call from a passerby that saw the camaro at Boeing Field last night. This guy knew his cars, and gave us a year and make to look for. He said it was a 1968 Rally-Sport. We're running the information through the police computers, maybe we'll get lucky." 

Willmore's cell phone chirped and he pulled it out of his coat pocket and walked out of the autopsy bay to answer it. A moment later he came back in, looking shaken.

"That was one of the police detectives. They said a hooker they picked up near Pioneer Square tonight reported seeing our man. Two nights ago he picked up an underage girl who was working the same street as this woman. She identified her from pictures as a recent runaway; 14 year old Tina Alconi." He bit his lip and looked at the   
boy's body on the table before looking back up at the other agents. The determination in his eyes was doubled with this new information. "We've got to find this bastard."

"Jesus," Mulder rubbed his eyes and stared at the floor, lost in thought.

Scully pulled off her gloves with a snap and threw them away. She left the room to change back into street clothes. 

Willmore turned to Mulder, "I'm going to go back over the case, see if I can find anything we missed. You riding back with her?" He was eager to get out of the morgue.

"Yeah, thanks for the ride." He reached over from his position on the countertop and grabbed Scully's notebook, rifling through it for more information. His mind was getting sluggish from lack of sleep, but he was haunted by the thought that they might not catch this guy, there was so little to go on. So far, all their work had   
amounted to a vague physical description, and a description of his car. He desperately wanted more. A few minutes later he looked up from the notebook to see Willmore and Peterson had both left, and he was alone in the cold autopsy bay, the boy's body now modestly covered with a white sheet.

He stared at it.

It was just a young boy, why would anyone do these things to him? He shook his head. Value judgements would only cloud the issue. The killer had a different set of values to follow, and he needed to understand them if he was to get one step ahead. One step, that's all it would take, and now a little girl's life depended on it too. Now they had a cause, a specific person to save. A face and a name for the next victim, if they didn't get their act together quick. He shuddered to think that one morning soon, Willmore might call him out to look at her body, discarded in a heap on some lonely roadside.

He cautiously slid off the counter and walked to the table, standing over the body, not wanting to lift the sheet. Suddenly the lights went off and the background hum of the room died down to complete silence. Mulder looked around and realized the only light was coming from the hallway, falling through the glass window in the door in a shaft, landing at the head of the table. He slowly looked back at the body, feeling certain he would see something different this time. But it was still just a dead boy under a sheet.

He thought about this boy, unconscious, being operated on over and over again. He would have been unrestrained, but somehow incapacitated the whole time he was captive. Something had happened to make the killer attack and kill the boy, maybe he had fought back somehow. Either way, cutting someone up wasn't part of the killer's usual plan. Then he took the corpse to a peaceful place, somewhere with grass, outdoors, and carefully laid them out. It was all such a complex series of steps to follow, he wondered what joy it brought the mad doctor. Did he get his jollies from the operating, the killing, the careful disposition of the body? Maybe he required the whole process to satisfy him. Mulder stared at the still form under the sheet.

 

"Mulder?" Scully returned, transformed once again from doctor to FBI investigator. She stopped, surprised to see her partner alone in the dark room, hovering over the body like a specter. She walked to his side and looked at the body for a moment before looking up at him. His face was in shadow but she could still see his haunted, tired eyes. She reached out for his hand and gently took it, drawing his attention to her.

"The lights went out," he said weakly, stating the obvious.

"Yeah, I see that. Come on. Let's get out of here. You look like you need some sleep."

"What about him?" He indicated the body.

"I'll get someone to take care of it. Let's go." She gently removed her notebook from her partner's other dangling hand and pulled on his arm just enough to get him moving, doing the math in her head to figure out how many hours he had been awake at this point. Too many, she thought, and if he didn't get some rest he was going to be more of a hindrance than a help tomorrow.


	12. Chapter 12

Super 8 Motel  
June 18, 9PM

Scully sat down on the bed with a moan. Performing two difficult autopsies in one day had worn her down, made her feet hurt from standing and her back hurt from leaning over the table. Now she just wanted to relax and get a good night's rest, but Mulder had livened up on the ride back to the motel. He was restless and had wanted to talk before turning in, and so had followed her back to her room.

"Tense?" Mulder asked, sitting down next to her. She nodded without opening her eyes. As she had hoped, she soon felt his fingers rubbing her shoulders, making little circles on the muscles of her back, crushing the tension out of her. She began to relax and lean into it, enjoying the pleasant tingling sensation that was flowing through her, when she felt one of his arms snake around her and pull her close. 

He reached his other arm around in front of her and turned her towards him. For a moment he looked into her eyes, cautiously evaluating what he found there. The dreamy, comfortable look she returned matched his own, so he leaned forward and kissed her.

She returned the kiss, a little surprised but not disappointed. Things had felt different since Antarctica. She had made some clumsy moves to indicate her interest after her cancer went into remission, but he had gently rebuffed her, changing the subject whenever she tried. She had let it go, and life had gotten complicated. But since Antarctica they had felt closer, he had been more attentive, more involved. She knew it was only a matter of time before they took things further.

She felt his stubbled face rubbing against her soft skin, scraping against her chin, burning her cheeks. His lips moved over hers and she felt his tongue gently exploring her mouth, teasing her lips. His hands wrapped around her face, moved down so his fingers gently trailed over her neck and continued down, tracing a path along her back that made her tingle. She reached for him, her fingers running along the sides of his face, following the outline of his ears and pushing through his hair. Time seemed to slow down as if in a dream, and Scully let it take her wherever it was going.

In a flash, she remembered everything. Five years of better and worse. 

Mulder breaking into an old RV to rescue her from a killer.

Mulder holding her in a hospital hallway, telling her the truth would save them both.

Mulder's smile when he heard her cancer was in remission.

But she also recalled all the times he had run off and left her to come find him, or just to wonder if she would ever see him alive again. The times he had gone to do things on his own, seldom using his best judgement and unwilling to listen to anyone else. 

Mulder releasing a child killer from prison in the hopes he would lead him to his sister's fate. 

Mulder letting a quack doctor drill a hole in his head to bring back childhood memories, nearly driving him over the edge of sanity. 

She remembered being ready to leave the FBI, thinking he didn't need her. Thinking she was just extra baggage on his quest.

Suddenly, she became aware that their positions had changed. She was lying back on the bed and he was over her, still kissing, touching, exploring. His hands ran down the front of her blouse and traced the shape of her breasts. He ran a hand down her leg to pull up her skirt and run his fingers over the nylons covering her thighs, his touch gentle and light. His eyes were closed as if in a trance, concentrating, lost in the moment.

Scully felt a knot in her stomach. This wasn't right. Mulder was her partner, her friend, an unpredictable, tortured soul that had somehow become an integral part of her life, but maybe not the kind of person you built a stable, healthy relationship with. She wasn't sure she wanted to explore any further, to make the attachment any deeper. As much as she had wanted this, the logical part of her mind suddenly wondered if she'd really thought this through.

Wriggling, she tried to get out from under him calmly, but her arms and legs were pinned by his greater weight, her mouth covered by his own. She got an arm up to his chest and pushed against it, hoping to get his attention, but he took it for playfulness, and grabbed her hand at the wrist and held it still. Panic seized her, and she took the most immediate way out; a hard push followed by a loud "NO", so loud she surprised even herself.

They stared at each other for a moment, suddenly an arms length apart on the bed. Mulder's face was hot and flushed, his expression conveying perfectly that he couldn't imagine why she had stopped him. She still felt the panic, and when she realized he could see it in her face she thought she could see his heart break.

"Scully, I'm sorry." He reached out towards her but she backed away. "I don't know what to say. I thought we were..." 

"No, no," she quickly got off the bed and went over to the table, feeling a need for distance, the space to regain clarity. The case file had been dropped on the table, and she stood there and pushed at the papers with her fingers, not really seeing them. "It's not..I just needed some space," she said, knowing, even as she said it, that it was completely inadequate. 

After a long moment she felt Mulder behind her, his arms wrapping around her waist but not pinning her, leaving her free to get away. He rocked her gently against his body. She could hear his breathing, and feel the hot air against her ear as he whispered, soft and concerned. 

"What's wrong, Scully?"

She took a deep breath, feeling herself shaking from the strange mix of passion and panic, and the fear of telling him what she was thinking. Honesty was a new thing between them, and she wasn't yet sure it was preferable to their old habits of denial. Her heart pounded in her chest as she made her decision.

"I'm.. afraid of you," she finally said. She felt his arms tense, his body slip against her back, a puff of warm air against her cheek. It was as if she had delivered a punch directly to his stomach. 

"Why?" She heard more shock and hurt than she thought anyone could express in one word. She hated knowing she had done that, and was thankful she couldn't see his eyes.

"I'm not sure I should trust you this way."

He ran his hands down over her arms until he clasped her hands in his, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her arms together, holding her securely against him. She leaned back into him, and closed her eyes. Wrapped up like this she felt so warm, so safe. She questioned herself again. 

"You almost died in Antarctica." He spoke quietly, leaning his forehead against the top of her head. She strained to hear him. "I had to stop and give you mouth to mouth, CPR. There were.. creatures all around us, pounding to get out of their containers. It was right before we climbed up the vent. Do you remember?" She remained silent. She didn't remember the creatures, but he had told her this part before.

This part he hadn't told her.

"These creatures were beating on the walls, trying to get to us, but I wouldn't leave you. It didn't even occur to me that a time would come when I should leave your body behind and save myself." He took a deep breath. "You looked so small, wrapped in that huge parka. I couldn't leave you. If you hadn't woke up, I would have died there with you," his voice caressed her. "I won't ever leave you, Scully, and I won't let anything hurt you."

"Including you?" She closed her eyes and listened for a response.

"You can trust me." His voice was just a quiet plea in her ear.

She squeezed his hands. "You give everything one-hundred and ten percent, Mulder. It's overwhelming sometimes." He held her for a moment longer, pressing his face against her hair, then kissed her neck and let her go. She didn't dare turn away from the table, feeling her eyes tearing, even as she heard the door click shut behind him.


	13. Chapter 13

Somewhere in Seattle  
June 18, 9PM

She sensed a change in her surrounding. She wasn't able to move, but she could open her eyes, if she was careful and slow and concentrated hard. Her lids quivered and lifted just enough to reveal a sliver of brown iris and large black pupils, which were assaulted by the brilliant flood of light directly over her head. She closed her eyes.

A few moments later the light moved, leaving her in the semi-darkness behind her eyelids. She struggled to open her eyes again. She felt the cold metal table under her back, and felt a sheet over her front. She managed to open her eyelids a little, taking in her surroundings again.

She saw a floor lamp, which had been moved down to illuminate her midsection. The man was standing just beyond it, lost in the glare of the light, but she knew without a doubt he was there. If she strained to look towards her toes she could just see a sheet fencing off her body at the midsection, hiding his activities from her   
sight. She watched him moving, methodically moving his blood-covered hands up and down. She realized after a moment that he was pulling a needle and thread, sewing something. In her sedated, exhausted state, she wondered what he was doing, with an odd sort of detached curiosity. 

 

He looked towards her, seeing her eyes open. He laid the needle down on her abdomen, carefully laying the thread down so it didn't tangle, and moved to her head. He looked at her face thoughtfully, evaluating her condition from the disoriented look of her eyes. He brought his hand up to her face and pressed his fingertips to her   
forehead. She felt a jolt that shook her whole body, making it kick up from the table. Her eyes flew wide open for a moment and then fluttered shut, leaving her drifting in darkness again.

He picked up the needle, now dangling from the thread which led to the half-sutured incision, and continued his methodical stitching.


	14. Chapter 14

Coffee shop  
June 19, 6:45AM

Scully had gratefully downed two cups of strong coffee while waiting for Mulder, but he still hadn't arrived. She hadn't slept well last night, thinking about him, thinking about them. She wished she could express herself better, so as to make him understand how much this new thing between them concerned her. There was so much at stake, a friendship, a partnership, a relationship. She felt it had the potential to be one of those rare, defining moments. It was a fork in the road, and the direction they took would have major consequences for the rest of their lives, and so it deserved careful consideration. No wonder it seemed so hard. But now it was time for work, and she tried to put all those other issues out of her mind. There would be time to deal with them later. Now, there was a little girl to save, and her time was running out.

She checked her watch and looked out across the street to their motel for what seemed like the hundredth time, frustrated that she still didn't see Mulder heading in her direction. Finally, she dropped a few dollars on the table and went back across the street.

"Mulder," she pounded on his door with her fist. After a moment he opened the door and leaned on the doorframe, looking at her through dull eyes. His hair was sticking out in strange directions and he wore tattered sweats that were wrinkled as if he had slept in them. "What's wrong? We have a presentation to give in about an hour." She pushed her way past him and looked around his room. Scattered around were pictures of the victims, autopsy reports, transcripts, everything from the case file. She looked back at him, worry now evident in her eyes. "What did you do all night?"

He shrugged, rolled his head around and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. "I couldn't sleep. I went for a run, and then I went over the case again."

"Mulder, did you sleep at all?" He shook his head, not meeting her eyes. "You've been up for over 48 hours! How are we going to present your profile?" She looked around the room in frustration. "Go take a shower and put on a suit. If you hurry we can still get there in time." She started gathering the case file papers back together into a pile. Mulder didn't move from the doorway.

"Scully, don't do that," he moaned. She stopped and looked at him.

"Mulder, get ready. We have to go do this." Her voice was stern, intending to leave no room for questions. If they missed this meeting she knew they would defeat Skinner's whole purpose for sending them here. Valuable, hardworking agents didn't fail to arrive for meetings to present their work. 

"No, don't do that." He was in front of her in two steps, grabbing her hands roughly and making her drop the papers. "I'll take care of it later," he said, a little more disgust in his voice than necessary. Somehow she felt instinctively that the disgust was not aimed at her, but at himself. She could only imagine the internal dialog he had been berating himself with all night.

"Mulder, I know you're tired and frustrated, but we have to do this. Let's go present your profile and then you can come back and get some sleep." She said it slowly and clearly, her voice firm but not scolding, appealing to his logical side. "Mulder, there's a little girl who needs our help. We have to do this right. We can't let other issues cloud our judgement on this." 

He stood there, still holding her hands and looking down at her in a sleepy haze. The moment seemed to stretch on much longer than it should have. 

"I'm sorry about last night," she heard herself offer.

"Don't be," he quickly dropped her hands and walked towards the bathroom, eager to escape. "You were right." He shut the door behind him and after a moment she heard the shower come on. She closed the front door and sat down on his still-made bed, flipping his laptop open to browse over his profile before their presentation.


	15. Chapter 15

FBI Field Office  
June 19, 9:30AM

Mulder had performed flawlessly, surprising considering his sleep-deprived state. Although Scully had felt prepared enough to step up and help him, he hadn't needed it. He had presented a profile that was complete, insightful, and genuinely useful, taking into consideration all their knowledge of the case and the evidence so   
far, and molding it into a description of the killer's activities involving each victim. He was also able to give a rough description of the killer's methods, his background, what motivated him, and how they might watch for him to strike again. The other agents had listened attentively and carefully taken notes, apparently impressed with his presentation, in spite of his reputation.

Willmore had received a list of Red 1968 Camaro Rally-Sports registered in the King County area, and narrowed that down to those owned by medical professionals and students. That still left almost 90 vehicles to investigate, and he handed out assignments after Mulder was through presenting his profile. Armed with this   
information, the agents headed out in teams of two to begin questioning owners and examining vehicles. 

Willmore handed a sheet to Scully, listing ten cars that needed to be checked out. She took it but Mulder enthusiastically snapped it out of her hands almost immediately. "Alright, Scully, ready to go?"

"Not with you, Mulder. I'm going out with Willmore today." He looked up from the sheet in amazement.

"What?"

"Mulder, you haven't slept in three days, at least. It's not safe. I don't want you watching my back if you're half-asleep." She snatched the assignment back from him. "I want you to go back to the hotel and get some rest. I've already talked to Willmore, and we'll go check out these cars and call you if we find anything." 

He grabbed her arm and quickly led her out into the hallway, out of the other agents' earshot. When he stopped he stooped down so he could stare at her eye to eye as he hissed "You're ditching me?" His voice conveying both amazement and anger.

"I'm not 'ditching' you, Mulder. You need to get some sleep. I'm giving you time to do it." Scully didn't flinch under his stare. "Willmore doesn't know why you're not joining us today. This isn't going to look bad to Skinner, if he even finds out about it. If we find anything we'll let you know. You're not going to miss anything."

He stood up and looked away from her, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. He looked up and down the hallway, seeing that they were alone, before he turned back to her. "Is this because of last night?"

She looked a little surprised that he would dare make the connection, and a little dismayed that he had cut right to the core of the problem. She didn't want to sit in a car with him all day, driving all over Seattle, nothing to talk about but things she didn't want to talk about. Last night still felt awkward, and it was exactly what she had been afraid would happen if they pursued a relationship. All relationships had awkward moments, time when   
people needed to be apart, but she and Mulder normally had none of that time, especially while on the road. Today, she had managed to arrange some.

She decided honesty had not served her well last night, so she chose to try denial again, even though she knew how bad she was when it came to lying to him. "No. No. Not at all. I just don't think you should be in the field today. I don't trust you to be my backup in your condition."

"Well, there seems to be a sudden lack of trust going around, that's all." He saw Willmore come out of the conference room and start heading their way. Mulder glared at her, still annoyed, a little suspicious that she was not telling him everything, but unwilling to make a show in front of another agent, so he kept his mouth shut. 

"Agent Scully, are you ready to go?" 

"Yes," she looked back at Mulder, steeling herself against the hurt and resignation in his eyes, but didn't know what else to say. "We'll call you, Mulder." She turned and left with Willmore, leaving Mulder standing alone in the hall.


	16. Chapter 16

FBI Field Office  
June 19, 2:30PM

 

Mulder arrived back at the office before Scully and Willmore, so he waited in Willmore's office until they arrived. He had gotten a few hours sleep at the hotel before he was woke by the ringing of his cell phone, telling him one of the other agents had apprehended a suspect, and for him to meet Scully and Willmore back at the office to assist in the interview. 

He wandered around, looking at the Civil War photos, maps and drawings hung on the walls before he sat down in Willmore's chair to examine the family pictures on the desk. Apparently he was the father of a very cute little girl. Mulder was still looking at the picture when they came in.

"Mulder, you made it," Willmore hung his jacket on a coat rack in the corner. "Hang on and I'll go get the details on our suspect." He hurried back out of the office. Mulder sat back and put his feet up on the desk, watching Scully, who was walking around the office looking at the same pictures Mulder had gone over a few minutes before.

"So, how was your day?" He finally asked.

She feigned interest in the pictures to casually avoid meeting his eyes. "Fine. None of our leads turned up anything, obviously."

"Get along with your new partner?" He prodded her with the question. 

She chose to ignore the bitter undertone and took it at face value. "Willmore's really interested in the Civil War. He talks about it constantly. He can relate any situation to a strategy used in one battle or another." She sat down in one of the chairs facing the desk. "That, and his kids." She looked across the desk at him. "Did you get any rest?"

"About four hours," he rolled a pen around on the desktop with his fingers, never taking his eyes off of hers now that he had the opportunity. "Good enough?" As much as he wanted to be angry with her for ditching him, he found he was just happy to have her back, even if she did seem a little uncomfortable for some reason.

"Better than nothing."

An awkward silence settled over them, and she fidgeted a little, wondering why being alone with Mulder was suddenly difficult. 

He looked at the pen he was playing with and started to speak. "Scully, I think..." He stopped abruptly as Willmore came back into the office.

"Ok, guys. He's waiting for us," he came up behind Scully, putting his hands on her shoulders and leaning down close to her ear, nearly inciting an uprising from Mulder in the process, "and we have a surprise for you, Agent Scully. You know him."

She turned around to look at his face, confused. "I know him?"

"It's your assistant from the morgue, Tom Peterson."

"Peterson?" Scully couldn't begin to hide the amazement in her voice.

"The agents who captured him were examining a car that belonged to a retired Dr. Winston. It was obvious he wasn't responsible for the murders..." Willmore began to explain.

"Why was it obvious?" Mulder interrupted him.

"He was physically incapable of committing the crime," Willmore explained, a little annoyed with Mulder for questioning his agents' evaluation. "They found blood in the trunk and dirt on the car. When questioned, the Doctor mentioned he had loaned the car out several times to a young student he was mentor to, Tom Peterson. They picked Peterson up on his way out of class at the University and questioned him, and he admitted to using the car on the nights in question. Now we just need to get a little more out of him."

"Have you determined where he performed the mutilations?" Scully asked, still suspicious. 

"He's still denying any involvement." Willmore answered. "We have a team searching his house now, but they haven't found any other evidence linking him to the crime yet. We need to get him to tell us where he did it so we can rescue any other victims he has there." Willmore walked out the door, heading for the interrogation rooms. 

Mulder stood and walked over to where his partner still sat. She looked striken, lost in thought. Suddenly any awkwardness between them was forgotten.

"Are you ok?" He asked, laying a hand on her shoulder.

"I don't know, Mulder." She shook her head. "I worked with Tom for two days and never got the feeling he was anything but a hard working young student. He paid close attention to everything I showed him. Could it have all been an act, a brazen act put on by a murderer who had maneuvered himself so close to the investigation that he could watch his handiwork being dissected by the investigators while he stood right under their nose?" She stood up, running her hands over her suit to straighten it.

"Well, let's go talk to him," Mulder placed a hand on her back and let her lead the way to the room. She was still lost in thought.

Until he opened the door.

Sitting at the table of the dim, bare room was her assistant, dressed in jeans and a light blue T-shirt with a small logo on the breast for some ski equipment company. He slumped in the chair, looking mentally beaten. Wilmore sat across from him, files spread out in front of him. Tom's face brightened to see her enter the room.

"Dr. Scully, thank God. What's going on here?" He blurted out before they could shut the door. Scully sat down at the table without answering him, looking into his eyes, searching for a clue about his thoughts. Was he hoping to play them for fools and make them believe his lies, or was he genuinely confused? Mulder watched her and hung back.

"Well, I guess you can tell us, Tom. What happened?" Her tone was cold and businesslike, with just a touch of disappointment.

"Your people detained me this morning on my way out of class. I don't understand. They keep asking me how I did it, where I did it, if I have any more victims hidden away. But I didn't do anything." The desperation and confusion was clear in his voice.

"Do you have a lawyer?"

"Yes," he looked from Agent Scully to Agent Mulder, casually leaning against the wall in the shadows at the back of the room. "My father's arranged for one. But I don't need one. I haven't done anything."

"What about the car?" Mulder asked quietly.

"I ran some errands for him. He said he wanted the car to get some use because he couldn't drive it anymore."

"Why can't he drive it?" Scully asked.

"His hands shake. It's some kind of palsy, but he doesn't like to talk about it. He was forced to retire and he can't drive because of it. He barely functions anymore, but I met him when he was one of the top surgeons at Harborview. He's a great man."

"So how do you explain the blood in the car?" Willmore leaned forward, staring hard across the table.

"I can't. I didn't do anything. He asked me to drive it to the store to pick up some groceries for him, so I did."

"I think you're lying," Mulder moved forward and sat on the edge of the table close to Tom. "I think you did kill them." Mulder leaned over him a little more, aiming to intimidate. Scully watched Tom closely, evaluating his reaction. He was horrified.

"No, No, I didn't! I swear!" Tom shook his head vigorously.

"I think you killed them, I think you dumped the bodies, and I think you got a job in the ME's office so you could enjoy cutting them up one last time."

"No! No! I'm going to be a doctor, a pathologist. I want to help people, help them get justice. I've never hurt anyone." He paused looking from one agent to the other, meeting their gaze unflinchingly, pleading with damp eyes for them to believe him. "I'd help you if I could, but I didn't kill those people." He looked at Scully, "please, Dr. Scully, you have to believe me."

Mulder stood up and put his hand on Scully's shoulder, breaking her attention away from the young man for a moment. She rose and left the room for a quick consultation in the hallway, away from the suspect.

"What do you think?" She asked. Mulder could read the indecision in her face. She didn't trust herself on this matter.

Mulder leaned his back against the wall and rubbed his eyes with one hand, thinking. "I don't think he did it. I don't think he's the one we're looking for."

"What should we do?"

"I'd like to talk to Dr. Winston, myself. It's probably going to mean stepping on Willmore's toes, but I think his men missed something there."

"Well, I consider myself a good judge of character, Mulder, and I don't think Peterson did it either. I never had a clue the whole time I worked with him, that it could have been him. Even in retrospect I can't think of anything suspicious." She shook her head, looking down at the floor, lost in thought, rummaging through her memories for anything that might stand out about the young man who had helped her perform three autopsies over the last two long days.

Mulder stepped away from the wall and put a hand on her back, and the other hand on the doorknob. "Let's go step on Willmore's toes, then."

"Mulder, let me," she stepped away from him, just out of his reach. 

"What?"

"Let Willmore and I go talk to Winston. We can check him out, and having Willmore in on it will keep us from offending anyone here. No one wants to be second guessed by the visiting agents."

"You and Willmore? Scully, why?" He was obviously frustrated and a little offended.

"Skinner told us to play nice, and sometimes that means playing politics, Mulder." She knocked on the window of the door and signalled Willmore to come out in the hall. "You wait here and I'll let you know what happens."


	17. Chapter 17

Mercer Island, WA  
June 19, 4:30PM

Willmore had grudgingly agreed to go with Scully to interview Dr. Winston again, only doing so out of respect for the more experienced agents. They had driven to Mercer Island, East of Seattle in the middle of Lake Washington. It was known for being inhabited by the richest of Seattle's rich, and the huge mansions that covered the island were carefully hidden from the road that wound around the island by a thick cover of fir trees and greenery.

Willmore parked the car in the shaded driveway and they both got out, pausing to stare up at the massive, three-story Tudor house that towered above them. Framed by the tall trees and set off by the impeccable landscaping, it looked like a dream house.

"I wouldn't mind living here," she said, looking up at the towering trees.

"Save your pennies, Agent Scully," Willmore said, walking towards the front door. "Maybe in two or three hundred years on an FBI salary..."

Willmore rang the doorbell and they stood side by side on the front porch for a few minutes, each lost in their own thoughts about what they wanted to ask. When there was no answer he shuffled a little and rang the bell again. Finally an old man opened the door, but inspected them suspiciously from behind the screen door.

"Dr. Winston?" Willmore asked, and the old man nodded unsteadily. Willmore held up a badge for his inspection. "I'm Agent Willmore and this is Agent Scully. We're with the FBI. May we come in and ask you a few questions?"

"I've already talked to your people today. They took my car away." He opened the screen door and let them enter, directing them to a sitting room off the main foyer. Willmore winced a little at the strong medicinal smell that assaulted him as they entered, though he knew it was typical for an elderly person's home, and was probably standard issue for a retired doctor.

As they followed him in and took their seats, Scully noted the way his hands quaked and trembled of their own accord. He seemed to have little control over them, and it was painful to watch him try to pick up a magazine to move it off the chair before he sat down. He grabbed at it and tried to get his fingers to close around it several times, before he got a good enough grip to move it and toss it onto the coffee table. He shakily settled himself down into the antique, overstuffed chair. "Now, what can I do for you?"

"I'm sorry to bother you sir, we just had a few more questions," Scully began. "I understand Tom Peterson is an acquaintance of yours?"

"I've been mentoring him since he was in high school. I was still practicing then, and I learned about him from a teacher who thought he had potential. I encouraged him to go to medical school." Winston's eyes became unfocused as he thought back to his glory days. "I had a number of students brought to my attention in those days, and I tried to help whenever I could. It's so hard to do it alone, you know." Scully nodded sympathetically, thinking she could never have gotten through all those hard years of school without the support of her family and mentors along the way. Having a mentor with high standing in your field would be a huge help for anyone.

"Tom didn't really have any support from his family, and so I helped him where I could, helped him choose classes and recommended paths for him to follow. I even helped him get jobs in places that would help advance his career. That's how he got the job at the ME's office." He shook his head sadly, looking from one agent to the other. "I can't believe he did what he did. He was always such a nice boy."

There was a long, sad pause in the room, while they all collected their thoughts for a moment. Willmore found he couldn't take his eyes off the old man's ever-moving hands. They flapped and shook, despite the way he tried to hold them still by laying them flat on his knees. "Sir, tell me about the car. How did Tom come to borrow it?"

"Oh, that car was my pride and joy, but I can't drive it anymore, so it just sat in storage for the last couple years. Tom, of course, knew I had it, everyone who knows me knows about that car." He chewed on his lip in thought for a moment. "One time I asked him to fetch some groceries for me, as he often did after coming by for some homework help," he smiled regretfully, "it was kind of our arrangement. He told me his little car wasn't running good and asked if he could use my car. I thought it was a wonderful idea, it hadn't been used in so long. It fired right up and he drove it to the store. At least I thought he did."

"I didn't even think about it until your boys were here this morning, but it did take a long time for him to get back whenever he used it. The first time, I had begun to think the car had broke down on him, but he finally drove up, all smiles, and I figured he just took the long way home. I used to do that a lot when I was his age, too." He smiled, remembering those days long past, but it faded quickly. "To think he was using it to carry bodies," he grimaced. "I don't care if the FBI keeps that car. I don't think I want it back in my garage again."

"Does anyone else have access to the car? A maintenance person, household staff, anyone?"

"No, I have no staff. No one used it but me, and I can't drive it anymore."

A silence settled over the room again, and Willmore finally broke it. "Can you tell us anything else about him, what kind of man he is?"

"Well, a good one, I thought. He was always so eager to learn, so hard working. He's curious about everything, about how things work, he's kind of an inventory of gadgets too. No matter how busy he was, he always came by to visit once a week. Just last week he was telling me how excited he was to be working with the FBI at the ME's office." Scully felt a lump in the pit of her stomach. "He said he was working with a specialist from back east, and he was learning so much. He said he wanted to join the FBI someday. I don't understand how he could be so two-faced to me." The old man shook his head sadly. Scully didn't let on that the same question was occurring to   
her.

"Well, Sir, I don't think we need to take up anymore of your time." Willmore began to stand. Scully interrupted him. 

"One more thing, sir. If you don't mind me asking, what is your condition?" She came over to his chair and squatted down in front of him, looking at his shaking hands.

"Are you a doctor, young lady?" He asked, curious but not offended by her question.

"Yes, I am." She gently took his hands in her own, turning them over and watching the involuntary spasms that wracked them. On the insides of his wrists she noticed small burn marks, heavily scarred, like hot metal buttons had pressed against his skin over and over again.

"It's a degenerative nerve condition. No one has identified the cause, though they suspect it was something I was exposed to during my time in the service." She nodded, letting his hands go. 

"I'm sorry to hear that. It sounds like you were a real asset to the medical profession."

"I'd like to think so."

"Thank you, Dr. Winston. We'll see ourselves out." They left him in the room alone, contemplating the turn of events in his life that had left him in this condition.

He heard the door click shut and sat in the chair for a moment longer, before deciding he had had enough of being treated like an invalid for the day. He stood, determined to do something about it, and left the sitting room.

Alone again in the darkened house, he walked through the kitchen, past the gleaming countertops and stainless steel appliances, and opened a door that led to a staircase to the basement. With painstaking care he lowered himself down the steps, trying to hang onto the banister with his jittery hands. 

At the bottom of the stairs he searched the wall for the light switch and when he found it, illuminated the basement. Bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling illuminated the rough stone walls. In one corner was a wooden chair next to a table with a large, strange machine on it. 

Capacitors, vacuum tubes, and a V-shaped pair of wires such that you would expect to see a crackle of blue energy crawling up between them all conspired to make the contraption look like it belonged in a fifties science fiction movie. The old man slowly sat down in front of the machine and donned a wristband, which was strung to the machine by a pair of wires. It took several tries for one shaky hand to place the band over the other, and for a moment it seemed like an insane game as one hand chased the other. Finally he secured it on one wrist. Performing the feat again, he placed a second band on his other wrist. He then grabbed a large wooden lever, carefully wrapping his fingers around it and forcing them to grip tightly before he pulled it down, making a connection at the bottom of it's swing.

With a hum the machine came to life. Indeed, electricity did dance up between the wires. The basement lights dimmed as power crackled from the contraption. He held his arms out and felt the power flowing into his body. The wristbands began to get hot, transferring power to his skin through the metal contact patches. It traveled up his nerve pathways and calmed them, canceling the random signals coming from his brain. After a minute he confidently grabbed the lever and pulled it up, turning the machine off. He easily removed the wristbands and held his hands out straight in front of him, noting with approval that they were now rock-steady.

Pleased, he went to the door, disguised against the back wall of the basement, and left the machine cooling in the room alone while he went to enjoy his temporary fix.


	18. Chapter 18

FBI Field Office  
June 19, 5:00PM

Mulder was getting tired of waiting in Willmore's office, so he left to wander the halls in search of coffee. He was passing the hallway that lead to the questioning rooms when he saw Peterson being escorted out without handcuffs. The agent accompanying him pointed him towards the front office and started to walk him there.

"Hey, Peterson, what's going on?" Mulder changed direction and walked up to the younger man, who regarded him suspiciously. "Sorry about what I said during the interrogation, it’s just part of the job."

"That's OK," he waved it off. "My lawyer got me out. The FBI hasn't found anything at my house, and they can't hold me." He shook his head in frustration. "I knew they wouldn't find anything. There's nothing to find. They're just wasting time while that guy could be killing that little girl."

Mulder nodded. "Can you tell me where Dr. Winston lives?" He had been trying to use the computer in Willmore's office to look it up but couldn't get past the password to use the crime database.

"I can take you there. I need a ride home, since my car has been impounded. We'll go right by Dr. Winston's." Mulder thought it over for a second and nodded. He wanted to catch up with Scully and Willmore, and this seemed like a good way to do it. It may have been his sleep addled mind, but it had occurred to him, after they left, that there was no reason all three of them couldn't have gone together. He was rehearsing a partner-to-partner talk in his head as he plotted a way to catch up with them.

"Fine, let's get going." He nodded to the other agent. "I'll take him from here."


	19. Chapter 19

Dr. Winston's Residence  
June 19, 5:30PM

"He certainly doesn't look like he could be our killer." Scully opened the passenger door of Willmore's car and stood there, looking across the roof at him. He looked back at Dr Winston's house, thoughtfully.

"I still think my detectives were right. He doesn't look capable. What did you think of his condition?"

"He wasn't faking it, if that's what you mean. Plus we have a recorded history of the disease advancing on him, since he lost his career because of it. It's obviously something that's been effecting him for years. There was something strange, though."

"What?"

"On the insides of his wrists there were small, round, burns. I couldn't tell what to make of them."

"What could that mean?" 

"Hard to say. They could be old wounds, they could relate to some kind of treatment for his palsy. Either way, it's a little suspicious after we found those burns on the victims."

"Did any of the victims suffer from a palsy like he does?"

Scully thought back. "I think the first three did. They were all older, homeless men showing the first stages of Parkinson's, according to the police interviews with the victims' friends and relatives."

Willmore thought for a moment longer, leaning against the car and looking back at the house. "The victims have burns, he has burns, and the first victims had the same condition as he has." He heard a sudden intake of breath from Scully and looked up. "What?"

"I've read about experiments to rehabilitate patients with degenerative nerve disorders that involve electroshock therapy. Limited doses are applied to the damaged nerves and it can stimulate them into working again, but usually only for limited time, and the process was found to cause more damage than it repaired so the procedure was considered a failure." Her eyes were big as she considered the consequences. "What if he's been experimenting with something like that on his own? The first victims could have just been experiments, but it grew into something more sinister."

"Could repeated electrical shocks result in personality changes, maybe even psychotic behavior?" 

"Of course. That's what electroshock therapy was used for, to stimulate or isolate portions of the brain and effect personality changes in people suffering from mental illness."

He looked back at the house, his mind reeling with new possibilities. "No, this is too far fetched. We can't keep   
disturbing this guy with nothing to go on but a ridiculous theory. I thought you were the reasonable one, Agent Scully."

"Willmore, I am being reasonable. This man owns the car that was used, he has strange burn marks similar to the victims, and he has no alibis. He fits the profile Mulder laid out perfectly. I think this warrants a few more questions." She was getting a little impatient with Willmore, especially after the remark about her being unreasonable. Mulder would have already been back in the house by now. "We need to go talk to him again. Let's call the field office for backup." 

He looked skeptical, but as she pulled out her phone and dialed the field office, he resigned himself to going along with her. He returned to the front porch while she made the call. By the time she caught up with him, he was pounding on the door and ringing the doorbell, but there was still no answer. Finally he turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. He looked at Scully.

"I think there's 'just cause' here." She nodded and they pulled their guns and entered the house.

Doctor Winston wasn't in the sitting room where they had left him a few minutes before. They looked around and decided to explore the house, and Willmore bumped into her as he chose the same direction she had. She shot him a look that sent him the other way, towards the back end of the house, while she explored the front. They cautiously wound their way around, until they had carefully examined all the rooms on the first floor and met back in the kitchen. Scully opened the basement door and looked down the dark stairwell, seeing a dim light. She glanced at Willmore and he nodded quickly, his eyes confirming her thoughts. Gun drawn, she started down.

She cautiously descended the stairs, sweeping around looking for any threats hidden in the shadows. By the time she reached the bottom she was fairly certain they were alone, and she pointed her gun at the ground, allowing Willmore to pass and move ahead of her. He immediately went straight to the machine, located on a wooden table   
set flush against one wall.

"What is that?" Scully asked, holstering her gun and peering around him to get a better look at the mess of electrical components that had been crudely meshed together.

"I don't know," he reached out and touched a harmless looking part of it and received a shock that made him quickly pull his hand back.

"Jesus, Willmore, be careful!" Scully scolded him as he shook his hand to chase away the tingling that remained from the shock. She reached around him and carefully picked up one of the wristbands and looked at the metal buttons inside. "Look, this is probably what caused the burn marks on his wrists."

Willmore nodded and looked around the basement, spotting a door in the back wall. They drew their guns and moved to the door. Standing close to it, Scully could hear a low grinding noise coming from behind it. She shot a worried glance at Willmore and he shrugged in response. They took up positions on either side of the door and Scully grabbed the door handle and flung the door open. 

"FREEZE! FBI!" Willmore moved into the doorway so he could see into the room.

Inside, Dr. Winston sat at a pottery wheel, slowly pushing on the pedal, causing the table to turn and making the low grinding sound they had heard from the other side of the door. His hands were covered in clay and he was working on a delicately shaped vase. He froze and pulled his hands back from the wet clay form on the wheel, looking completely shocked at their entrance.

"Wha- what's going on?" He asked in his quiet voice, clearly confused.

"What are you doing?" Willmore asked while Scully walked around the room, confused and disbelieving. It was a dead end, there was nowhere to hide victims here. She returned to the doctor, holstering her gun again in frustration. She had been so sure she was really onto something here, but she had come up empty handed.

"Just some clay. It's my hobby. I used to do quite a lot of it when.. before my hands.. you know." He shrugged, still confused.

Scully squatted down next to him and looked at his hands, which were now steady and normal. "And what about your hands, Doctor? Why aren't they shaking?" 

He looked at his hands and looked up at her, as if he wasn't sure he should tell her. He looked back at his steady hands again. "That machine in the other room, it's a kind of therapy."

"It shocks the nerves and gives you control again?" Scully asked, playing on her original hunch.

"Exactly." She took his hands and turned them over, wiping the clay off the wrist where the button scars were.

"Doctor, the first three victims suffered from a similar palsy, and all the victims have had electrical burns somewhere on their bodies..." He gasped and she looked at him, "Is there something you can tell me?""

"Tom built me that machine. I told you he was very creative, kind of an inventor, and that was one of the things he built for me. I seldom use it because it gives me headaches." His eyes widened with horror. "You don't suppose he tested his design on others, do you?"

Scully looked up at Willmore and he pulled out his cell phone. After a brief talk with someone back at the office he turned back to her. "They found nothing in Peterson's home or car and his lawyer got him released for lack of evidence. He was last seen leaving with Mulder." 

"We've got to find him." She looked the old doctor over one more time, admitting to herself that he wasn't the one. How could she have been so taken with Tom's innocence that she was duped into believing him and suspecting this old man? 

She pulled her phone out, cursing herself for leaving Mulder alone, she should have known he would find trouble if there was trouble to be found. She quickly punched the memory button for Mulder's number, and after listening to it buzz six times, clicked the phone off.

"Mulder's not answering his phone. Willmore, get some agents out to cover Tom's home, get an APB out on Mulder's car, and get Tom's family's address and number. I want to talk to them and see if there's anywhere else he could be hiding. Maybe another property his family owns." Willmore turned away and began relaying Scully's requests to the field office. 

"They're pulling the information for us. Let's head back to the field office. They'll call us with any information they find." Willmore pocketed his phone and waited for Scully to leave the room before he turned back to Dr. Winston. "Thanks for your cooperation, and I apologize for our intrusion." The old man waved it off as unnecessary and watched as the young agents left.

Dr. Winston sat hunched over his idle pottery wheel, thinking about the boy he had mentored for so many years, wondering how he could have grown up to be a murderer. Finally he got up and wiped his hands clean and went upstairs to look through his correspondences with Tom to see if anything stood out that could help them find him.


	20. Chapter 20

Mercer Island, WA  
June 19, 5:30PM

"Turn down this driveway."

Mulder steered the rental car down the long gravel driveway. Lined with thick, wild bushes and shaded with tall trees that hung over the road, it led to a two story brick home. It had a beautiful view of Lake Washington.

"Is this your place? You must do pretty well for a student."

"It's my parent's guest house. I have an apartment in town too, but I stay out here sometimes when I want to get away from the crowds."

"That's understandable. Well, here you go." Mulder stopped the car, eager to unload his passenger and get to Dr. Winston's house. He was sure there was something to be found there, and he was concerned Scully and Willmore would miss it. Tom put his hand on the door handle and stopped. 

"Agent Mulder, I can't believe you guys think Dr. Winston did it, but I've been thinking about it, and I have something he gave me that seems a little suspicious in retrospect. I'd like you to see it, if you wouldn't mind coming inside for a second."

"Sure, Tom, what is it?"

"It's easier if you just see it. It might be nothing, but, I'd like you to take a look."

"Ok," Mulder parked the car, leaving the keys in the ignition, and followed him into the house.

"Just wait here, I'll get it." Tom hurried off to the kitchen, and Mulder saw him open the cellar door and descend stairs to the basement.

The inside of the house was decorated in typical early-seventies beach-house style. Nothing special, just the typical nautical decor with Japanese glass floats suspended in nets in the corners. The place smelled musty and disused. Mulder stood in the main room, one hand in his pocket playing with his keys, looking out at the water, waiting. He thought about the profile he had developed and all the ways it applied to Dr. Winston. 

As he stood looking out at a small boat sailing by, he heard a low hum and realized the lights had dimmed. After a minute it cut off with a snap, as if a fuse had blown, and the lights came back up. Mulder was still pondering the cause when Tom returned from the basement, empty-handed.

"Couldn't find it?" Mulder asked as he approached.

"No, I've got it right here." He lunged forward and hit Mulder in the chest with both hands outstretched, palms out. Immediately Mulder felt a strong electrical shock that threw him back, knocking him off his feet and causing intense pain in his chest. He hit the floor hard, knocking over a small table with a ceramic vase that shattered on impact. Mulder gasped for breath, feeling his chest tightening in a way that produced more panic than pain. There was no time to try to gasp out the questions that were spinning in his head.

"Not much longer before people catch on, don't you think, Agent Mulder? I was lucky that lawyer got me out, but I only have so much time left. I thought I'd share my skills with one more patient before I go, though." He reached down and grabbed Mulder's arm, pulling him to his feet and dragging him towards the basement. "I think you need my help."

Along the way, Mulder caught sight of a heavy wood paddle fastened to the living room wall, decorated with Greek letters, and as they passed it he pulled it down and swung it at Tom's head with all his strength. Even in his stunned condition, he managed a good hit, knocking the younger man down. Mulder charged past him and out the front door. Stumbling as he reached the edge of the raised porch, he tripped down the stairs, landing hard on the dirt path and causing vicious pains to shoot up his arm and across his chest as the exertion fought against his heart's efforts to regain it's steady beat. He lay on the dirt for a moment, unable to move through the haze of pain pulsing through his chest, gasping for air like a fish on the shore.

He heard the heavy footsteps coming over the porch before he saw Tom standing over him, blood trickling down from his hairline. The look on his face was frightening, and he seemed to be insane with rage as he spat out every obscenity he could think of.

"You bastard, you god damn, son of a bitch, bastard! What the hell were you thinking you could get away with back there?" Mulder saw the fury building up and winced as he saw the foot coming at him. Tom began kicking him in the ribs, striking out in a rage. The stabbing pains in his chest increased with every blow, and Mulder suddenly felt the sensations so clear and overwhelming, he couldn't hear Tom screaming at him or feel the blows. Everything else disappeared, and he found himself immobilized by a solid wall of pain.

"Don't you know who I am? I'm here to help you." Tom kicked and swore until he was panting with the exertion, and Mulder had quit fighting. "You're more thankless than that god damn boy who swore at me and then had the nerve to attack me. After I fixed him! I had to kill him to protect myself." Tom stopped, his hands on his hips, breathing heavily as he leaned over and looked at his patient. He stood up straight and ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back, looking around and wondering if anyone else had seen his little display. After a moment he had regained his composure and spoke again. "Don't make me kill you too. Just play your part and everything will be fine." 

He reached down and hauled Mulder up off the ground, shocking him into a dazed submission with an electrical discharge where his hands touched him. He watched as the agent's body went limp, eyes rolling back into his head until only the whites showed. When he was sure he   
wasn't going to fight anymore he dragged him back into the house.


	21. Chapter 21

Northgate District  
June 19, 9:00PM

Dusk was coloring the sky pink and orange, lighting the high, wispy clouds a brilliant purple. Scully looked out the window at them as Willmore drove, trying not to ignore him, but hard pressed to drag her thoughts away from the day's activities, and the previous night's. 

Although she had chased Mulder out of her room and then found ways to avoid him all day, she would do whatever she had to to get him back safe. She couldn't help but feel a twinge of guilt over abandoning him that afternoon, though neither could have predicted the outcome. All the same, she felt this wouldn't have happened if she'd been with him, like she was supposed to be. She had to figure out where Tom was hiding and find him before Mulder got hurt. She pushed away that thought, and tried to forget the many nightmares she had had over the years, the ones where she pulled back the sheet on the autopsy table to find Mulder's cold body and lifeless eyes looking back at her.

Willmore skillfully wove his way through the evening traffic, finally taking a freeway exit and following some twisty roads into a gated community. Once past the gate, he located the house and drove up the wide turnaround driveway which surrounded a large fountain, all carefully laid out in front of a massive house. 

Mr. Peterson answered the door and looked at them suspiciously through the locked security screen. "I don't have to answer any of your questions without my lawyer," he said firmly.

"Your son is in a lot of trouble, Mr. Peterson," Willmore began.

"My son was released for lack of evidence. I don't understand this further harassment. You people are trampling on his rights."

"If we could just come in and talk I'm sure you'll understand." Willmore began. He caught sight of Mrs. Peterson, standing behind her husband and just peeking around to see the agents at the door before flitting away again. "New evidence has come to our attention. If you refuse to answer our questions you could be charged with interfering in an investigation. If your son is guilty and you help to hide him, you could be charged as accomplices to murder."

Mr. Peterson looked from one agent to the other and finally unlocked the screen and waved them in, directing them to a sitting room off the foyer. Mr. Peterson took the armchair, establishing himself as being in his own territory.

"Mr. Peterson," Willmore began, "your son has disappeared. He was last seen in the company of another FBI agent, and we suspect your son may have abducted him."

"Maybe your agent abducted my son, did you ever think of that?" He began shouting. "You people drag him out of school and accuse him of these crazy things, it's just like Ruby Ridge all over again..."

"Sir," Scully interrupted the man's tirade, "we have found evidence tying your son to a machine which uses an unorthodox electrical-discharge therapy technique to temporarily reduce the severity of palsy. The first three victims suffered from palsy, and all victims have shown electrical burns of some kind. Your son had access to the vehicle used for abductions and dumping of the corpses. Now he has disappeared in the company of an FBI agent who believed in his innocence, and I suspect he may have turned on him." She saw Mrs. Peterson cover her mouth, clamping down on emotions that were about to overflow. "What we need to know from you is: where is he? Are there any other family properties he might be using? Any vacation homes? Anything you can tell us about?"

The man stood up quickly, angry. "You can't make us tell you that, it's private information. Anything we say would be speculation. Besides, you probably have it all in your records already,"

"Sir, it could take us days before we get that information from our sources, and we need to find him tonight. There's a fourteen-year-old girl, a run away, who is also suspected to be in the killer's possession. Any hope we have of saving these people is dependent on us finding them now. If your son is innocent we need to find that out too, so we can go on to other suspects, but right now he's our primary suspect."

"If that's true, then you are endangering those victims by wasting your time looking for my son." The man walked to the door and held it open. "I'm not telling you anything. You can talk to my lawyer. Anything he tells me to tell you, ok, anything else, you're on your own. Now get out of my   
house." Willmore went ahead of Scully, walking past Mrs. Peterson on his way to the door. 

At the foyer, with the women still behind them in the sitting room, Willmore stopped Mr. Peterson. "Would you like to tell me what you meant by that comment about Ruby Ridge?" Willmore asked to his face, standing a little too close, infringing on his personal space.

"I'll tell you what I meant. You people think that just because you're government, the rules don't apply to you. You think..." Mr. Peterson's rants became louder, and soon he was shouting conspiracy rhetoric at Willmore, not noticing anything else around him, determined to get his point across.

Scully immediately recognized Willmore's impromptu goading of Mr. Peterson as the excellent distraction it was meant to be. She walked up to Mrs. Peterson, trying to ignore the shouting from the foyer. "Mrs. Peterson, can't you tell us anything?"

"My husband handles all this, I'm sorry Miss." Her voice cracked as she spoke and her demeanor was defeated and frightened. Scully got the impression this woman knew her son was guilty and that it was only a matter of time before he was caught.

"Please, Mrs. Peterson. The agent Tom disappeared with is my partner." Scully didn't hide the desperation in her voice or the worry in her eyes. "I have to find him, Mrs. Peterson. I need to   
find him, and that little girl, and get some help for your son." Scully saw Mrs Peterson look away and then glance back. "I worked side by side with your sone at the MEs office for two days. I want to help him. Please, let me do this. If we wait to get the lawyers involved it could be too late."

The woman looked back at her husband, still absorbed in his ranting against the establishment. Her resolve was shaking, and Scully knew she needed to push it over the edge. "He's been my partner for six years, Mrs. Peterson. He saved my life and so many other people over the years. He's a good man. Please, help me."

The woman looked into Scully's eyes and saw something there that made her act. She silently walked to the desk and pulled out a notepad, quickly writing something on it. She tore it off, turned around and handed it to Scully. "Go now, don't let my husband know. Just promise me you won't hurt Tom if you can help it."

Scully looked at the address written on the paper and nodded, shoving it into her pocket. "Thank you, Mrs. Peterson. We'll do everything we can to keep anyone else from getting hurt. There's been enough bloodshed." She walked quickly to the door, grabbing Willmore and dragging him away from the conversation on her way by.

"We've taken enough of these people's time, Willmore. Let's go." Scully led the way to the car, leaving a still-shouting Mr. Peterson in the doorway. As they drove away she saw Mrs. Peterson standing in the sitting room window, watching them leave.


	22. Chapter 22

Mercer Island, WA  
June 19, 9:00PM

Mulder awoke to darkness, feeling a cold metal table under him, and belts that crossed his chest, waist, and legs holding him to it. As he regained his senses, he realized that he was naked, covered only by a light sheet, which was pulled up over his face. A sudden claustrophobic panic came over him and he shook his head to knock off the sheet, breathing hard. It fell away and he found himself still enveloped in complete blackness.

"Who's there?" A small voice came out of the darkness, barely audible but still revealing the fear behind it.

"My name's Mulder. Who are you?"

"Tina. You're the first one I've met here who could talk." There was a short pause and he heard the soft sounds of fabric being gathered, followed by a slapping sound and tiny barefooted footsteps on the concrete. "You're new here." The voice was right next to his head now, and he could hear a slight wavering in it caused by pain or fear or both.

"I'm an FBI agent. I was coming to rescue you, but he caught me instead. Can you help me unbuckle these restraints, Tina?" He felt her small hands run down from his shoulder until they reached the belt over his chest. He tried to ignore the tickle as her slight fingers trailed over his skin, looking for the buckle. Just as she touched it they both heard a noise outside the room. She disappeared and he heard her footsteps running away and the clanging of the table as she climbed back up on it. She was still again by the time the door opened and the lights came on.

Peterson strode confidently in, carrying a medical journal, wearing a bloodstained white lab coat. He went to Mulder's table and yanked the sheet off, leaving him lying naked, completely unprotected in the cold room. Mulder flinched but tried not to let on that it bothered him.

"How are we doing, Mr. Mulder?" He asked, not looking at him, instead flipping through the journal.

"I'd be better without these restraints. They're a little binding," he joked, hoping to get a response from the younger man. Peterson didn't even bother to look at him. "You never restrained your other patients, why me?"

"I'm thinking I'd like to try something new on you, Mr. Mulder. I'm wondering how much pain you can take before you naturally pass into shock and lose consciousness." He was still paging through the journal, looking for something specific.

"That's a bad idea. I pass out really easy. I think you should just skip that and let me go."

Tom pulled an instrument tray over and poked through the instruments until he found a scalpel. He laid the journal on Mulder's stomach and ran his hand over Mulder's chest, following the curve of his collarbone with two fingers, while examining a diagram in the journal. "I think if I start an incision here and it wraps around to here, I should be able to just peel this whole layer back, like we do in the autopsy bay." He seemed to be speaking to himself. "Or maybe I'll just cut it in strips, then I can peel it away one strip at a time."

Mulder froze, listening to him, and then started thrashing against his restraints. "LET ME GO!" He yelled, putting up as much of a fight as he could muster. Tom stepped back, surprised by the intensity of Mulder's writhing. 

"Mr. Mulder, I'm asking you as your doctor, please sit still. It'll make it much easier for both of us." Mulder's eyes grew wide at the sight of the blood-encrusted scalpel Tom Held up. He threw his weight against the belts again, feeling them cut into his bruised sides and moving the metal table slightly, bumping Tom enough that he dropped the dirty scalpel. It clattered on the floor and bounced under a large equipment cabinet against the wall. Tom turned on him in frustration.

"That's enough, Mr. Mulder! I didn't want to have do this," Mulder tried to writhe away as Tom laid a hand on his chest and he felt a tingling charge move through his body. Suddenly, his muscles went limp, and his commands for them to move went unanswered. His eyes followed Tom's movements as he retrieved a clean scalpel from the equipment cabinet and returned to lean over Mulder's chest.

"Don't Don't Don't" All Mulder could manage was a feeble chant. He lifted his head as much as he could muster, straining his eyes to see what was going on, but he dropped it back down as he saw the blade dig into his skin and blood began to seep out. He clenched his eyes closed and felt the cold metal of the blade and a disconcerting pull as his skin was sliced open. His nervous system had been slowed to a crawl by the electrical shock Tom had given him, but the pain did eventually make it's way to his brain, and when it did he didn't try to hold back and started screaming, hoping someone would hear him. Tom looked at him, annoyed, and reached for a small bottle on the instrument table. 

"I'll give you something to yell about," he rubbed some of the liquid from the bottle on the cut he had just made and Mulder howled even louder. 

Mulder managed to open his eyes long enough to pin the younger man with a stare. His eyes were filled with pain and cold hatred for this man who had complete control of him, and tears rolled down the sides of his face. He screamed at him to stop, gasping for breath, but Tom ignored him, smiling to himself. He lifted his scalpel and proceeded to make the next cut.


	23. Chapter 23

Mercer Island, WA  
June 19, 9:30PM

Dr. Winston cursed himself for not remembering it when the agents were there. He would have done anything he could to help, but he had completely forgotten about the Peterson's guesthouse. Ironically, it was within walking distance of his home. Convenient seeing as how he couldn't drive since his hands had recommenced their constant shaking.

He walked up to the house, noticing the rental car parked in front, and knew immediately it wasn't Tom's. He was quite familiar with Tom's little Honda. He found the front door unlocked, and as he hesitated to open it, he heard the screaming coming from inside the house. It was a deep, howling scream, of a man in intense pain. He had heard screams like that many times over the years, coming from the wounded and dying patients in the emergency rooms he had worked in and supervised, and he had hoped to never hear them again now that he was retired. His shaking hands fumbled with the doorknob and he charged into the house.

He followed the cries down to the basement, past a machine that looked very similar to his own, and to a door, set into the back wall of the basement. He hesitantly pushed it open.

When he did he saw his friend and student, Tom, leaning over the body of a man, strapped to a metal operating table with thick belts. The man was screaming incessantly, stopping occasionally to gasp another shuddering breath before continuing. His body was drenched in sweat though he was curiously still. Winston saw the flash of a scalpel in Tom's hand.

"TOM, STOP THAT!" He commanded, making the younger man jump, unaware of his presence. Dr. Winston hurried to the table and saw Tom had made a series of horizontal incisions along and below the man's collarbone, each about six inches long, and blood was flowing freely from them, running in rivulets down his chest over skin that was already bruised purple. "My God, what are you doing? Stop that man's bleeding, now." He looked around for gauze and pads, but saw none laid out, as if Tom had never intended to sop up the blood. Tom still stood looking at him dumbly.

"What the hell are YOU doing here?" Tom finally asked, completely forgetting about his project on the table. Mulder had stopped screaming and was watching the men with hollow, frightened eyes, his mouth agape as he struggled to pull in breaths through the panic that had overtaken him from the moment Tom had started cutting. 

"I've come to talk some sense into you, Tom. What are you doing? I spent all those years helping you, and you helping me. I thought we were friends." The old man grabbed the dirty sheet off the floor and considered making bandages out of it for a moment and decided to pass. He turned back to his student. "How could you betray me like this? I had such great hopes for you."

"I'm experimenting with things no other doctor has ever had the opportunity to try. This man's my patient, and what I'm doing to him is no different than what you did to thousands of people over the years."

"What you're doing here is pointless, and against his will. You're just torturing people for your own pleasure. It has to stop!" Dr. Winston surprised himself with the anger in his voice, but the betrayal was too great, and seeing this poor man mutilated on the table made a mockery of everything he'd dedicated his life to.

Tom's eyes turned cold. "I'm not going to let you stop me, old man. Your help was appreciated at the time, but now I'm done with you." He looked at the scalpel in his hand and took a step towards the doctor.

Forgotten, Tina had been hiding from Mulder's screams, knowing she would be overpowered if she tried to do anything. Now this older man had appeared, and she wanted to help if she could. She couldn't stand idly by and watch the madman kill again. She jumped off the table, ignoring the pain from the infected incision low on her stomach, which nearly made her knees buckle. Gathering her sheet into a rope she came quickly up behind the killer, looping it over his head. Once around his neck she crossed the ends and pulled it as tight as she could.

Tom didn't see the attack from behind coming. He dropped the scalpel and it clattered to the ground, and he began flailing around, trying to turn and get his hands on the girl, to shock her back into submission. She hung on tight, although she was so small that she was no match for the bigger, healthy man. Before he could get a hold of her, Dr. Winston grabbed his hands, keeping him from turning. 

Tom struggled to pull his hands free, feeling the cloth tighten around his neck, feeling each breath coming harder. Finally he wriggled his hands around to grab Dr. Winston's wrists, digging his fingers in and delivering a potent electrical shock.

To Dr. Winston, it was no different than being hooked to the therapy machine. His nervous system absorbed the shock, as it had been conditioned to do, and he felt his hands becoming stronger and steadier. He increased his grip and held on as Tom's legs weakened, his knees buckled, and he finally collapsed onto the floor. 

Tina held the sheet tight for longer than necessary. Finally, she let go, and his head hit the floor with a dull thud. Cautiously bending over him, she could see he was still breathing, but just barely.

Dr. Winston pulled off his sweater and handed it to the girl to cover herself with, and then pulled off his shirt, folding it into a makeshift bandage and covering Mulder's wounds with it. Mulder watched helplessly as Tina unbuckled the straps that held him down, while the old doctor applied pressure to the incisions to stop the bleeding.

"Who are you?" Mulder could barely form words, and his voice was hoarse from screaming. The blood loss had left him dizzy and lightheaded, slipping into shock.

"Dr. Winston. Are you the FBI agent?" 

Mulder nodded weakly. 

Tina picked up a sheet off another table and gently pulled it over him, watching him closely, hoping she had acted soon enough and that he would be all right. 

"Your people came to see me, and I remembered this place after they left. I'm glad I got here, just in time I guess." Dr. Winston held the makeshift bandage down over Mulder's chest and trailed his fingers along Mulder's side, wondering if there were any broken ribs behind the dark bruises.

Mulder made an unsuccessful attempt to sit up, but Winston gently pushed him down. "My clothes...phone..." Tina looked around the room and spotted his suit tossed in the corner. She quickly went through the pockets until she found a cell phone, and brought it back to him. Mulder took it and lifted his shaking arm up high enough to see the readout as he pushed the auto dial buttons and then handed it to the doctor just as he felt consciousness slipping away.

Dr. Winston held it to his ear as it rang. For an instant he thought he was hearing it in stereo, mixed with the pounding footfalls coming down the basement stairs in the room behind him as Scully and Willmore arrived, Scully’s phone ringing from her coat pocket. They stopped just inside the door, shocked by the scene laid out before them. Dr. Winston clicked off the phone, one concern on his mind as he turned to the young agents.

"We need an ambulance."


	24. Chapter 24

Harborview Medical Center  
June 23, 9AM

Scully turned away and looked out the window at the dreary Seattle rain while Mulder pulled his clothes on. It had been four days since her partner was admitted. His heartbeat had slowly returned to normal, after the electrocutions he had suffered. The slices on his chest had been cleaned and stitched closed. The most frustrating part was recovering control over his stunned nerves and muscles. He had improved enough to be released to go back to DC and finish his therapy and they were both looking forward to going home.

"Ok, you can look." 

She returned to the bed, sitting down next to him. He had put on his pants and was struggling with shoes and socks. Although his recovery had been fairly complete considering the short amount of time that had passed, he was still struggling with some tasks that required manual dexterity. He huffed a little in frustration, and stopped to shake his hands out, as if that would help. He moved carefully, so as not to pull on the stitches in his chest.

"Relax, Mulder. It's going to take a few more days before you're back to normal, but it will happen." He shot her a look reserved for use by people who were given useless advice by those more able-bodied.

"Easy for you to say," he muttered, returning to the rather daunting task of tying his shoes. His fingers were weak and disobedient, and it felt like trying to eat with chopsticks, or more accurately, tie shoes with chopsticks.

"Tina received at least one severe shock during the week she was held captive, and she's recovered completely from the tremors." She paused, watching him struggle with catching the shoelaces that insisted on tumbling from his weak fingers as fast as he could grab them. "I saw her and her family today. They asked me to visit her hospital room. Apparently he removed one of her ovaries, but it looks like she's going to be OK. They wanted to thank us, especially you for your sacrifice." She stared at her hands for a moment, lost in thought. "Her parents seemed like nice people. They're going to try to work through whatever issues she had that made her run away." He looked over at her.

"Well, at least that's good news. Poor kid ran away and fell right into the hands of a serial killer. That's got to be a parent's worst nightmare." He finished tying the first shoe and looked with resignation at the other.

"Want some help?" Scully finally asked. "I am a doctor, you know. I'm qualified to help," she   
gently teased.

"I don't want you to help me tie my shoes," he said sadly, then smiling. "I didn't expect that until we're considerably older. Maybe eighty or so." 

She nodded and stayed put, her shoulder pressed against his, while he rested, wringing his hands together. She took the nearest one and gently massaged it, carefully loosening up the tense muscles. She moved her fingers and thumbs over his, gently applying pressure to the back of his hand, rolling over each knuckle, her fingers gliding over his wrist and rubbing the tension out of the muscles there. He thoughtfully chewed on his lower lip as he watched her work. She reached for the other hand and he gladly let her take it for the same treatment. A comfortable silence had sprung up between them, and he decided to enjoy it for as long as it lasted. 

Finally, she broke the silence. "Examinations of Peterson seem to have revealed an unusual chemical imbalance that allows his blood to hold a charge." Mulder perked up at her words.

"A charge? Like a battery?"

"Yes, and he can release the charge in graduated amounts, though they are still working on the mechanism behind that." 

"A human battery. Scully, I knew you'd come through for me on this one from the moment you found that handprint on the corpse. Skinner's going to find you as annoying as me, if you keep this up." He carefully leaned over ignoring the ache it prompted from his bruised sides, and attacked his other shoelace again. "What else has been going on?"

"Willmore took me to dinner last night."

"He did not!" Mulder pretended to look shocked.

"Really. He asked me out for dinner, took me to a really nice place downtown on the waterfront. We talked shop. I don't think he fully believed the human battery story, though. He seems like a nice guy. He's kind of grabby though. I think I caught his hands roving at least twice before I brought it up." Mulder looked surprised at her for a second before turning his attention back to his shoe. He almost had it and didn't want to lose his place.

"I could talk to him about that," Mulder said without looking up, his tone casual, as if offering to give him directions. 

"No, I've got him under control." She looked at him as if gauging his jealousy level, and smiled.

He finally sat back, relieved he had won the shoelace battle. "So, do you think we achieved what Skinner sent us out here for?"

"We caught the killer. We saved the remaining victim. We did our jobs and played nice with the local Feds. I don't think we left him anything to be disappointed with, except maybe your hospital bill." 

She stood up, retrieving his shirt off the foot of the bed. He stood and removed the loose shirt he had been wearing, but when he reached out to take the shirt she was holding he realized she had froze. Face to face for the first time with the six rows of stitches on his chest, the black thread and swollen red edges of the wounds stood out grotesquely against his pale skin. For a moment she couldn't tear her eyes away, clearly seeing for the first time the vicious dark purple bruises that covered his sides where Tom had kicked him, and the burns on his chest where he had been shocked. She ran her free hand over the bruised ribs, her fingers barely touching his skin, and then looked away, giving up her grip on the shirt.

 

 

He pulled the shirt on, watching her intently. To his surprise she reached out, slowly buttoning his shirt for him even though he was perfectly capable of doing it himself. He dropped his hands to his sides and let her. As she reached the top buttons he reached up and caught her hands, dragging her attention back to him, making her meet his eyes. 

"What's wrong, Scully?" He asked quietly, curious. He honestly had no idea what was bothering her, but the far-away look in her eyes told him her mind was elsewhere.

"Nothing, Mulder. I'm fine." 

She started to pull away, but he held on and watched her for a moment, sure she wanted to tell him, if he gave her time. She looked around the room, clearly considering escape, but finally looked back and met his eyes again. "I'm so sorry, Mulder," she said, shaking her head and looking away, suddenly on the verge of tears. She bit her bottom lip to still its trembling.

"Sorry? For what?" He still wasn't sure where the conversation was going, but he wanted to get it out in the open, no matter how painful. He felt an uneasiness waiting for her response, imagining all kinds of things he didn't want to hear her say, like 'goodbye', or 'it's over'. 

"For not being there when you needed me. For not being with you that day, watching your back like I'm supposed to. For not finding you in time. For not being the one to rescue you, after you've rescued me so many times." He pulled her close, feeling her shaking breaths against his chest. He heard her voice break as she said, "I'm so sorry." 

"Scully, you don't owe me for the times I've rescued you." He rubbed her back, nuzzled her hair. "You can't always watch out for me and I don't expect you to. I should have been more careful." He felt her wrap her arms around his waist, her breathing becoming more normal. "I shouldn't have gone out with Tom alone, it was just my enthusiasm getting the best of me. I was so sure Dr. Winston was our killer."

"I just wish I could have come through for you, Mulder. Dr. Winston's statement, about how he followed your screams to locate Peterson's operating room in the basement.." She shook her head again, shivering.

"You come through for me all the time, Scully, in ways you don't even realize. Don't knock yourself down over this. I'm OK, the girl was rescued, and the killer's in jail." He enveloped her in his arms again, leaning his cheek against the top of her head, closing his eyes.

"Are you ready to go back to the world of viruses and honey bees?" She asked, her voice still unsteady as she finally pulled away from him. He looked at her face to measure what she found there. To his relief he saw the same friendship and trust that had always been there, unhampered by their false start the other night and all the trouble it had caused. 

"I have this great idea for locating those Jiffy-Pop bee hives using satellite photography," he said, changing the subject, his face all boyish eagerness. He put his hand on her back and directed her out of the room. "Are you ready to spend a little quality time with some grainy photos and a magnifying glass?" She tried not to groan in response as the door swung shut behind them.


	25. Epilogue

Tom Peterson lay in his jail cell on a thin mattress, covering a wire mesh bed frame, which was intolerably uncomfortable. He stared up at the single light bulb, protected by a safety cage mounted in the ceiling. There was a small, stupid moth, which had somehow wandered into his cell, and had spent the last half-hour beating its brains out against the light. It made a small pinging noise every time it bounced off the bulb, but with a persistence he couldn't fathom, it turned right around and came back for more.

He lay on his back watching it, thinking about the nature of energy. It's ability to flow like water into his body through the machine he had built. Without the constant use of the machine, he had begun to lose his muscular control and his hands had begun shaking like Dr. Winston's. The moth continued it's pointless attack on the light bulb.

With great effort, he stood up and climbed onto the bunk. He reached a shaky hand up towards the bulb, stretching as far as he could towards it. His fingertips just brushed it and he felt an idea begin to take form. One way or the other it would get him out of here, dead or alive.

At dinnertime they slid a tray into his cell, and he waited until the guards had left him alone again to put his plan into action. He took the metal spoon from his tray, stood on the bed and reached for the light bulb. When he was sure he could reach it he steadied his hands and took a stab at it. He was successful on his first try.

The metal spoon broke the thin glass of the bulb and as it showered down, the spoon touched the element within. The lights dimmed throughout the jail as energy funneled into his body, conducted by the spoon. Locked by the electrical arc, his body was suspended between the metal bunk and the spoon. Somewhere a fuse blew, the power cut out, and Peterson's body fell to the ground with a thud.

******

The guard walked past the jail cells, looking in each to ensure nothing strange had gone on. The jail had experienced a power surge and resulting power failure to this block an hour ago, and now that everything was back to normal, he was making a final inspection of all the prisoners.

He walked by the cell containing the new guy, a serial killer. The weird part was that he was a young man, clean cut, smart and really polite. The guards already liked him, because he was always so courteous. But now his cell was dark.

"Hey, Tom, you ok?"

The young man was sitting on the edge of his bunk, his hands flat and steady on his legs, his face hidden in the shadows.

"Tom?"

"My light seems to have gone out. Can you get someone to come fix it for me?" His voice was curiously strong. The guard didn't make much of it.

"Sure, Tom. I'll get someone right up."

"Thank you."


End file.
